Company: Korek Telecom Company
Position: Deputy CEO

Biography: Hameed Akrawi is co-founder and deputy CEO of Korek Telecom, the Iraqi mobile operator based in Irbil.

He is a graduate of Baghdad’s College of Engineering and has a master’s degree in engineering from the University of Vienna, Austria. He has a doctorate in electrical engineering from the University of Leuve, Belgium. He worked as a university lecturer for six years in the UK and Austria. In 1993, he returned to Iraqi Kurdistan to work in the Television & Communications Ministry.

He was appointed Minister for Transport & Communications in the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in 1996, a position he kept until 2000, when he co-founded Korek Telecom with Sirwan Mustafa, adviser to the prime minister of KRG. Korek, the smallest of three mobile operators in Iraq, aims to expand its subscriber base to 3 million from 2.5 million.

Dubai-based mobile operator Etisalat is in talks with Korek over a possible takeover.

Contact: +964 7504 450 022
Company website: www.korektel.com/