From gatekeepers to catalysts

In 2010, my team and I were over the moon. Tawasul Think Tank had just won its first regional recognition at the Arabia CSR Awards in Dubai. The award mattered, but what I learned outside the ceremony mattered more. A distinguished English gentleman approached me, perhaps because my Omani dishdasha caught his attention. He was the event’s keynote speaker and told me that, as a young geologist around 1970, he had worked in Oman for a major international energy corporation.

He recalled meetings involving the late His Majesty Sultan Qaboos and the late legendary Oil, Gas and Minerals Minister Said bin Ahmed al Shanfari. One lesson stayed with him for decades: they paid attention not only to presentations, but to presenters, their eyes, body language and attitudes. Characters could reveal what maps and PowerPoints could not.

We discussed something that has occupied much of my professional journey since: How corporate social responsibility, sustainability and what we now call In-Country Value (ICV), now reduced to the term local content, could become engines of socioeconomic development rather than a peripheral corporate programme. He told me he would raise those ideas. I thought a little of our conversation, yet a few weeks later I got a call confirming that whom I met was no other than Sir Mark Stuart-Moody, the former Chairman of Royal Dutch Shell, Director of HSBC Holdings and Accenture and that he discussed sustainability, CSR and ICV with the late Sultan, and how a small Omani company won a regional award. The following years saw something much bigger taking shape across the country. PDO formally launched its ICV programme in 2013. By the end of 2024, its locally retained spending had risen from 18 per cent in 2013 to 42 per cent, approximately RO 1.5 billion, while its programme had contributed to establishing 83 local industrial facilities. That is real progress.

However, after more than 15 years working around CSR, social investment, sustainability, entrepreneurship and local-value creation, including as a former social investment manager of a multinational energy corporation, I increasingly believe our biggest challenge is no longer convincing institutions that these things matter. It is changing the role of the people who lead them.

Too often, sustainability and local-content professionals become gatekeepers: Guarding budgets with a scarcity mentality, approving applications, checking certificates, administering tenders and measuring compliance. A catalyst asks different questions with an abundance mentality. What new Omani company can this procurement create? What technology can we localise? Which SME or startup can become an exporter? Which graduate can acquire a globally valuable skill? What education, energy and environmental problems could become somebody’s business opportunity?

History provides a useful benchmark. When Norway discovered oil, it could simply have collected petroleum revenues while allowing foreign corporations to supply most of the expertise and technology. Instead, the state progressively built Norwegian participation, established Statoil in 1972, developed demanding standards and used its domestic market to help create a sophisticated supplier industry. Today, Norway’s petroleum supplier ecosystem comprises roughly 2,000 companies and has become internationally competitive rather than permanently dependent on protection.

That distinction matters: Successful local content should eventually produce companies that no longer need local-content protection. The GCC is now demonstrating how powerful that approach can become. Aramco’s iktva increased local content in procurement from around 35 per cent when launched in 2015 to 70 per cent in early 2026. Aramco says the programme has contributed more than $280 billion to Saudi GDP and created more than 200,000 direct and indirect jobs. Its next target is 75 per cent local content by 2030. ADNOC reports that its ICV programme has redirected more than AED 307 billion into the UAE economy since 2018 and helped create more than 23,000 private-sector jobs for Emiratis. Oman has encouraging foundations of its own. OQ reported RO 199.3 million in retained ICV value in 2025, RO 117.7 million of SME spending and local expenditure of almost 77 per cent.

So our next question should not simply be: How much did we spend locally? It should be: What became stronger because we spent it? Imagine every major sustainability, CSR and ICV programme publishing a simple annual impact dashboard: Omani companies scaled, technologies localised, quality jobs created, patents or intellectual property developed, carbon avoided, exports generated, SME and startup revenues increased and businesses graduating from preferential support into open competition.

Then go further. Give relevant leaders incentives and objectives for creating other successful leaders as suppliers, not merely managing and processing them. Use procurement pipelines to signal opportunities several years ahead. Connect large buyers with universities, startups and manufacturers. Reward consortiums that transfer technology and intellectual property. Use AI to identify procurement leakage and localisation opportunities. Most importantly, publish comparable outcomes so society can distinguish events or activities from impact.

I have watched this field evolve for more than 15 years. We have moved from philanthropy to CSR, from CSR to sustainability, and from sustainability towards ESG and ICV. The next evolution must be more important still: From gatekeeping to catalysing. The ultimate purpose of sustainability is not to sustain programmes; it is to create progress that can eventually sustain itself.

Khalid al Huraibi

The writer is an innovator and an insights storyteller.

Email: khalidalharibi@gmail.com