emptiness given that the population is
growing but opportunities appear to be
shrinking. Let us look at the Arab Spring
as a black swan event.
Arab Spring as a Black
Swan Event
It started with the self-immolation/
burning of a fruit street vendor in front
of a government building in late 2010
in Tunisia, due to the oppressive and
dictatorial rule of president Ben Ali’s
government. This act of protest caused
a revolution as the populace took to the
streets to voice their displeasure against
the current social, economic and political
conditions of the country thus forcing the
president to flee the country. This led to
the eventual overthrow of his government
and embolded other people to voice their
displeasure in other countries like Egypt,
Syria, Yemen and Libya among others.
Possible Causes for the Arab spring
included:
Unemployment
of
the
youth which made a lot of people feel
disenfranchised by their governments
yet they were paying taxes directly or
indirectly; Economic decline caused the
rate of inflation to go up forcing people
to dig deeper to buy food just like it is
happening in Venezuela.
Political corruption amongst the “elite”
12
MAL31/19 ISSUE
I don’t want to be a
doomsday activist
but we have to high-
light that marketing
and sales are said to
be less affected by
technology or robots
than other indus-
tries but the impact
is across board. Be-
ing multi-skilled and
having great soft
skills will be import-
ant in the future of
all industries, with
technology taking
center stage. conventional management of a country
especially when nothing is working as in
the case of Tunisia’s president who was in
power for 23 years and Hosni Mubarak
who had been in power for 30 years.
of government made the populace to
see a disconnect whereby they are living
in extreme poverty yet their taxes are
not being used to uplift their current
wellbeing but benefitting a few who live
a lavish life; In these countries even in Egypt, for
many years the consensus was that their
governments were working for the people
and many indicators were showing
progress on paper but those indicators
never measured the general view or mood
of the people who had been conditioned
to a life of pure autocratic rule and were
now feeling they can change that situation
Also the extent of the way the government
stayed in power can be a measure of poor
The self-immolation of the fruit street
vendor infront of government building
has never been seen in modern times thus
it came as a surprise to many if not the
entire world and due to the world being
a global village, it was beemed to billions
eliciting a variety of reactions. This was
very rare in modern times.
The extremity of the Arab Spring can
be viewed as significantly historical as it
brought about significant changes to the
lives of the people of those countries even
though some were not that positive as in
the case of Syria, Libya and Yemen where
it resulted in brutal suppression by the
government thus degenerating to chaos
by way of civil wars except Libya where
it caused sectarian violence, open slavery,
and torture of non-indigenous groups.