“My first invention didn’t come by chance or luck, I have been interested in this field since I was 12 years old, and that was when there was no Arabic support for computers like today and I had to come up with a way back in 1983 to encode Arabic names in Latin characters in 1983.”

YP: The invention, which was a "method for searching for information regardless of spelling mistakes and with cross lingual capabilities" created huge media coverage around the world. Where did that invention go?

GA: First, I would like to thank Yemen Post for this interview. The technology was basically a search engine that searches for information regardless of spelling mistakes or language it is originally stored in.  It sure received some strong media coverage in the US and also in our region.  The technology was the main foundation of company that was founded in the US back in 1999.  The technology itself had many applications and mostly used in what is known as B2B (Business-to-Business) scenarios.  To answer your question, the invention or “search engine” as I prefer to call it, was used in several applications in the US and especially in the areas of looking up names of products, companies, and people.  For example, one of the partners we worked with at the time was the US telecommunications giant Sprint. It also was used in several other applications that would be too technical to explain here.

YP: It was said that you didn't have a role in the invention whatsoever, and your role was that you were the Minister's son who brought the fame to inventor Abdullah Faris? 

GA: This is of course not true.  And, by the way, my job in the US company was the CTO (Chief Technology Officer) with tens of US and non-US developers under my direct management and supervision.  As you know, in the US, there is no regard to someone’s being the son of a prominent government official in order to get such a high tech related position in a totally private company.  In addition, people in Yemen love to make a twist for every story they hear regardless if it was a good or bad story.  As many may know, I have been in the computer technology and development field since I was 12 years old back in 1982 when there was not a single computer training center in Yemen like the ones we see all over the place now.  By the time I finished high school in 1988, I was already teaching computer programming languages such as Pascal and Basic.  That invention didn't come by chance or luck, I have been interested in this field since I was 12 years old, and that was when there was no Arabic support for computers like today and I had to come up with a way back in 1983 to encode Arabic names in Latin characters while ensuring that the spelling of Arabic names when written in Latin characters is always unique.  That method of encoding used to be called “Ghamdan Standard” and was used in several applications for the Public Telecommunications Corporation at the time. 

YP: You left to live in the United States after this invention was out, why did you come back to Yemen?  

GA: I felt that the situation in the US after 9/11 attack was not encouraging for Arabs and especially Yemeni people, and it was my primarily reason for coming back to Yemen after that.  I was not planning to come back to Yemen so soon.

 YP: Can we see another invention soon?

GA: Two years ago, I was working on a new search engine that offers what I like to call “Unlimited levels of tolerance for errors”.  It is an evolution of the current one but with some major differences in the way it encodes phonetics using pure mathematical algorithms.  It also improves accuracy and is easier to integrate into existing applications and databases while consuming much less CPU cycles to come up with a result.  In addition, I am working on a new product that I came up with its idea around two years ago also; it is very different from the search engines field.  It is actually a small device that I believe will make a big impact on normal people’s lives. 

YP: Could you explain more about this invention you're working on?

GA:  It is a hardware/software combination and has to be mass produced which requires a much bigger investment.  It is taking a little longer than expected to complete because I am also busy trying to make a living by running and managing my own business, which is also IT and technology related and consumes a good bit of my available time.  

YP: Business wise, do you consider yourself lucky to get jobs from the government because your father was a Minister?

GA: I must say that I'm lucky because I'm the son of Ahmed Al-Anesi in a different aspect.  I remember in 1981 when I was only 11, he brought home a computer and started teaching me what a computer was and how I could program it to do different things.  This is at a time when the total number of computers in Yemen could be counted on one hand!  Now, tell me if I am not lucky to be the son of Ahmed Al-Anesi, the telecommunications engineer, who happened to be the minister of telecommunications then.  I believe that my company, which I established myself without a single penny from my father, got projects because it introduced unique and very affordable solutions compared to what is available.  And for your information, my company was black listed in the Ministry of Telecommunications and PTC during the whole period when my father was the minister of telecomm and chairman of PTC.  And I guess you know that it was not black listed because it was such a bad company, but because he made it clear to me that it was off limits for my company as long as he is there! 

YP: Are you following your father's steps?

 GA: My father's steps are my biggest motivation, and I always say that. There are dozens of smarter and brighter people in Yemen, but they didn't find the right motivation and chance to continue and succeed in achieving their goals. Personally, I was blessed to have someone encourage me and guide me with wisdom and knowledge. I could say that my father's steps played and continue to play a major role in my life. 

YP: Some people say that you are selfish for not teaching students or give any sort of lecture to help them in improving. They say that you try to keep what you know to yourself?

GA: Well, it is really interesting to hear that.  To the contrary, I actually like teaching and I believe I have a rather good teaching capabilities. I have done a lot of lectures in Yemen and outside Yemen and never turned down an invitation to give a lecture. I gave lectures at Sana’a University as early as in the 80s and 90s by invitation from professors. I also gave lectures in the University of Science & Technology along with a number of other universities in Yemen.  I also was invited to give lectures in universities in the UAE back when I was in the US.  I even did a couple of lectures for some segments of the Yemeni armed forces!!   For those who believe that I do not want to spread my knowledge, I use this interview to extend my willingness to accept invitations to discuss and talk about the fields of engineering & information technology.  

YP: Your company has received many of the projects from the Ministry of Interior.  Why does the ministry prefer your company to others? 

GA: Comparing to other companies, my company is the least company that has projects at the Ministry of Interior. Just to be more accurate, since my company was established 12 years ago, we have done only three projects!!  Furthermore I can challenge anyone who could say that my company got more projects than the other companies. Foreign companies have dominated this field, and with the government giving my company such projects, it opens the door for local companies to invest and help in building the country, instead of counting on foreign companies only.  In addition, in all the three projects we did for the ministry of Interior, we introduced new solutions for the first time in Yemen. 

YP: One of the projects you did was the Passports Issuing System, what was the technology through which the passport can't be faked?

GA: The project was done back 1997 and we did the IT part of it involving the software development, automation, and complete technical infrastructure. Passport printing was done by a prominent world-class company that pioneered the field of security printing such as that used in printing monetary bills and contained numerous security features and was contracted with directly by the passports authority. However, we added a number of techniques using IT technology to insure that the passports cannot be tampered with. One of which was to have the passport holder’s photo printed directly on the passport in color and not attached like it used to be done in 95% of the passports of the world including the US , Canadian, and European passports.  It was a big technological challenge and we faced criticism at the time that we were attempting to do something that not even the big western countries have done yet. With strong encouragement from the chairman of the passports authority then, Dr. Rashad Al-Alimi, I am proud to say that we were the first country in the region to have a the color photo directly printed on the passport and we surpassed everyone else in this.  Everybody followed afterwards!!  In fact, countries like the US, Canada, and others just recently started doing this when Yemen did it about 7-8 years before them.  Our motivation at the time was to prove that we can also be innovators and at least take advantage of being a little late in this field by deploying and utilizing the latest that technology can offer.  

YP: You have also created a system for the traffic police authority which you promised to end bribes and counterfeiting. Do you consider that project a success today or will it need time?  

GA: First of all, I did not promise that it will end bribes and counterfeiting and I don’t think anyone can promise such a thing.  But we believed that the more the system is automated and depended less on the human factor, the better chance it will have at achieving this goal.  Instead of trying to automate a manual system that suffered from numerous bottle-necks and security holes, we started with completely re-engineering and overhauling the business processes of all the services offered by the traffic police authority. We also ran these processes through several optimization cycles while taking into consideration many of the issues and pitfalls that can be faced in the local Yemeni culture.  We were very careful to come up with a system of processes that were optimized but yet can be practically applied in our country.  We then developed a complete software solution and supervised the complete project from the IT and infrastructure point of view as well as the qualification of the employees running and administrating the system.  We are proud to say that everyone who sees the new system used now at the traffic police authority centers will agree with me that it has helped speed up all procedures and drastically eliminated any room of bribes or corruption.  I am equally proud to have the full encouragement of H.E. President Ali Abdullah Saleh of this project who visited two of the new automated centers and made a mandate to the traffic police department that the process of any service offered to the citizens must not take more than 10 minutes at the maximum.  I would like to invite you your readers to visit one of these automated service centers which are already running in Sana’a, Hodeidah, and very soon (by June 2008) in Taiz and Aden.  Other cities are following and the Ministry of Interior has made a decision to deploy the system in all governorates by the middle of next year.

YP: As a businessman, what are the main obstacles that businessmen face in Yemen?

GA: I don’t think I am qualified enough to answer this question properly because I am more of a System Engineer than a Businessman. 

YP: Being a founding board member of the Yemeni Businessmen's Club (YBC) and also in charge of the media sector, can the Yemeni Businessmen's Club (YBC) bring benefit to the country, or is it there as a club only?

GA: The Yemeni Businessmen's Club (YBC) has involved itself in a variety of activities over the last couple of years. But in the end it is not an executive authority to force change.  However, it tries to achieve that through education and raising awareness of various businesses related issues for its members and related authorities.  YBC has successfully organized some very important conferences in Yemen including the Family Business Conference last year and Corporate Governance workshop this year.  In addition, YBC has many other social and non-social activities for its members and their families with several units within the club managing these activities.  

YP: Being raised in a political house, do you have any interest to work in politics in the near future?

GA: Many people anticipate a politics career for me because my father was a minister for more than 20 years. What they did not know is that my father managed to keep the engineer inside him much more active than the politician and always reminded his children of this.   I think it may be too early for me to think about this and that I still have many other goals to fulfill before that. I would like to conclude with a funny quote that I once heard from one of my best friends who was introducing me to a group of people back in the US when I was student there by saying “We know the saying that rich people are born with a golden spoon in their mouths, this guy was born with a Disk in his mouth”; there goes my political future…!