Khaled Elmufti

Khaled Elmufti is currently heading the e-Libya initiative and a Senior Advisor to the ICT Minister for the new interim government of Libya. Khaled was a key player on the Libyan revolution last year who helped to establish communication infrastructure for free Libya. Professionally, in 2010 Khaled had founded the ‘Tatweer Research for Engineering and Information Technology’, a €200 million organization headquartered in Benghazi, to leapfrog Libya technologically into the 21st century.  Khaled’s vision was to create an ecosystem to foster innovation which would directly benefit the Libyan people.  He also founded Sapientia Consulting in 2008 to partner leading international firms to bring state of the art technology to Libyan organizations.

As the Arab Spring took over the region in 2011, the Libyan uprising started on 17th of Feb 2011 in Benghazi city, Khaled home town.  Khaled got together with other activists and by the 19th February they were getting a VSAT network ready and began podcasting the atrocities to the world. The time for reckoning came when the regime’s forces  moved towards Benghazi on the 19th of March. The activists have patched up the mobile network and restored some Internet connectivity to the country allowing basic communication for the revolutionary army and the citizens of east of Libya as well as Misrata and Zentan in the west of Libya. Now that Libya has been liberated, Khaled has become the Strategic Advisor to the Ministry of Communications within the National Transitional Council (NTC) in Libya, to not only restore communication in Libya but also to develop strategy and policy direction for telecommunications and Information Technology in Libya. His role as head of Tatweer continues where he is building the research centre in Benghazi based on an Open Innovation Model. He is also deeply involved in ensuring that democratic traditions take root in Libya.