Roya Mahboob: One of Afghanistan's First Female Tech CEO's & Bitcoin's Biggest Advocate
Once in a million years, a woman like her rises.
Photo credit: The Female Lead
Once in a million years, a woman like Roya rises.
Roya Mahboob was one of Afghanistan's first female tech CEOs (Afghan Citadel Software Company and the Digital Citizen Fund).
Throughout her life, she’s been committed to increasing Afghan women’s tech literacy and providing job opportunities to girls. It’s not surprising she was named in the 2013 #TIME100 Most Influential People in the World!
More recently though, she’s been involved in the ongoing evacuations in Afghanistan while working hard to spread the word on bitcoin.
There is so much we can learn from her story - from growing up as a woman in Afghanistan, to what it means to have resilience and a drive to succeed no matter the obstacles.
Roya’s Early Life
Roya was raised between Afghanistan and Iran. When asked what she wanted to be when she was younger, she said:
“I have always wanted to be an engineer because my father was a generic civil engineer. We preferred [that] or become a doctor. So those are the two things that most of the Middle Eastern or Afghans [want their children to become].”
When the Taliban took over in 1996, it was no longer safe or permitted for her go to school. “The everyday lives of people was made very difficult for us. That’s why we left it.”
… But there was another devastating reason for their leaving.
When Roya was little, she had a 6-month old baby sister who fell sick and sadly died. The reason was simple: her father and brothers weren’t home to accompany their mother to the hospital.
The laws did not allow women to leave their homes without a man by her side.
Hearbroken, Roya’s mom became desperate to leave Afghanistan. The family headed to Iran as refugees where once again, Roya’s education would be restricted until 2003.
By then the U.S. had begun their occupation of Afghanistan bringing along educational opportunities and security to the Afghan people.
“We called it the golden age of Afghanistan at the time.”
Becoming One of Afghanistan’s First CEO’s
Roya remembers hearing her male relatives talk about the ability to chat over Yahoo Messenger and search for information using Google.
These conversations fuelled her imagination. Wanting to know more, she’d head over to the only library in Herat to read old books.
It was this slow and painful learning process that made her first experience with a computer unforgettable. When she put her hands on a computer, she couldn’t believe how fast she could retrieve information by simply typing words on a keyboard.
At that moment, she knew technology would be her life’s great pursuit.
By age 20, she started working as a coordinator at the public university (while still in school). She was the first female hire and as you can imagine, she was not well-received by her 400 male colleagues.
One day, Paul Brantley, the former U.S. Deputy Undersecretary of Defense, came to her university. They talked about technology and how he wanted to build a technology incubator in Herat.
“That’s when I started my first company and I decided to hire all the woman's because we weren't... I mean, I wanted that we, as a woman, have our own technology company. I hired a lot of the other teammates, like classmates or friends, and other woman's either as a bloggers and programmers. And that's how I became one of the first female tech CEO in Afghanistan.”
Being a female tech CEO in Afghanistan wouldn’t come without its challenges. Roya faced a lot of criticism and mockery and threats. In fact, some of her male staff quit two weeks short of ending a contract job.
“We decided - don't hire again senior men. How about we bring in other woman's. In two weeks, we had time to finish projects. And actually they did a great job. They went and did a very good presentations and Americans who were there at the time, they really liked the job.”
Not only that, but working government contracts within a corrupted government added an extra layer of challenge.
“They didn't want to give contracts first to you. And if they gave the contracts, they make your lives like so hard. They don't pay you on time. But once the job's done, you have to borrow money from others and you have to wait months and months to get your money. And it was very difficult, especially for women and especially for the startups.”
Imagine having a hard time starting a business, maintaining your male staff, getting contracts and getting paid simply because you’re a woman.
Where there were obstacles, Roya did the impossible… She became one of the country’s first female tech CEO. A title rarely held in the developed world.
Necessity is the Driver of Change
Women who worked in Afghanistan could have bank accounts IF their family’s granted them permission.
Even then, a woman’s brother, husband or father could pull the money out of her account at any time, without her permission.
This meant Afghan women could not save or invest their hard-earned money easily. At the end of the day, they did not have control over their finances.
Being a female leader of company was no different.
Roya needed a male family member or a male colleague to accompany her to the bank so that she could pull money out in order to pay her staff.
At the time, many kidnappings were happening so it wasn’t even safe to go into banks anymore.
“My business partner sent me an article about bitcoin [and asked] ‘can you just look at this?’”
… Once again, a technological advance would get her wheels turning again…
“I found it’s something so interesting. It’s like gold and it’s something that you control it. And it's your own. No one can touch it and no one ever knows how much you have it. Yeah, and I love that because then you have control of your own finance. And then we, right away, and I mean in it, in a few weeks, we implement bitcoin in our system.”
In fact, Roya began paying her staff in bitcoin, even putting bitcoin into her company’s balance sheet LONG BEFORE Michael Saylor did. She was way ahead of the curve.
“Yeah. We value it so much […]. We then began teaching all of our colleagues how to use bitcoin. I have a wallet, each one has their own wallets as well. So it makes it much easier that they are receiving the monies.”
She expanded her bitcoin lessons to young girls, teaching them how trade, profit from bitcoin and manage wallets. At the same time, she began teaching retail shops to accept bitcoin telling them if they brought bitcoin to her, she could give them cash in return.
With the profits earned, she built centres that taught young girls about technology.
“Maybe I feel I was responsible. And I feel that I had the opportunity to learn about this technology computer in a course that UNDP provided for us free. And then I went to university free. So it's my job to give back to my community.”
Bitcoin and Afghanistan Today
According to Roya, Afghanistan made a lot of progress during the 20 years under U.S. occupation. For the most part, the country displayed human rights protection, freedom of speech and women’s rights.
Earlier this year, democracy ended when the U.S. pulled out of Afghanistan and the Taliban regime swiftly took over.
“We're gonna have a new chapter. Is it sad? Yes, we are all sad we are all shocked. No one is happy with whats happening.”
As the Taliban began conquering the country once again, the Afghan people rushed to the banks to get their money out, but they couldn’t. Their hands were tied.
“During the last six, seven weeks, the banking system was closed and they didn't add cash in for like couple of weeks. And they couldn't get any cash at the time. And other issues was at Western Union […]. They have a limitation as well. So you can’t get because there is not enough cash for everyone. People don't have foods to eat, they don't have money to pay for the evacuation, which is security and all of the tickets and everything. So like, it's make it very difficult. But that's the beauty of bitcoin. It doesn't need any like, you know, provision of any governments or any middleman. So right now, even with us, I think that we send monies with bitcoin. Many families that are received money currently is about the bitcoin and aid organization. Also, some of them use the bitcoin to send money immediately to someone else.”
Isn’t it true, that in the most dire circumstances, when governments fail us and economies collapse, people are forced to save their lives while leaving behind their wealth?
After all, they can’t take their real estate, or their stocks with them. All they can afford to take are their family members and possibly… a bag.
This is why many people see bitcoin as a life raft. It’s an opportunity to escape, to save yourself, to run away and rebuild somewhere new with existing wealth. What you need is a specific USB drive that contains your bitcoin and if you don’t have that drive, then you at least have the password.
So quite literally, bitcoin saves.
When asked what she would do if she were a political leader, her answer was nothing short of inspiring.
“What we are not going to do is give up on the millions of the children's that are left in Afghanistan. And we want to talk with the political leaders in the world, but also with the Muslim communities well. We can push the idea that women should have access to the education, should have the access to justice, to house and also the right to work. And I think that this is one of the things that is, as I mentioned, it's a new chapter for us as a new fight as well. After this, I will focus on advocating on that plus building our first Islamic school which is going to focus on blockchain, AI robotics, which all woman could have access to in that Institute.”
Roya gives me hope. It’s evident that the future is paved by educators, bitcoiners and women with big hearts.
Nice job, Ayelen. The original podcast is a must listen!
Roya’s story is inspiring. Excellent piece, Ayelen!