A meeting was held in Elbasan with the winners of the national startup programme for 2025 and the new applicants for 2026, where innovative projects and promising ideas in the field of technology and the digital economy were presented. The event focused on the rapid growth of the technology ecosystem in Albania, at a time when the number of registered companies in this sector has reached 3,300, while more than 21,000 specialists are employed in the information technology and innovation industry.
Prime Minister Edi Rama was also present at the event, where he praised the rapid development of technology and its impact on creating new opportunities for Albanian youth.
At the same time, a 15% increase has also been recorded in the number of students enrolled in programmes related to digital technology, reflecting the growing interest of young people in this sector with high development potential.
During his speech, the Prime Minister also underlined the role of technology in transforming the labour market and creating opportunities for young people to work from Albania for the global market, describing this period as a favourable moment for the country under the conditions of rapid digital development.
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Prime Minister Edi Rama: Thank you very much for your presence and thank you as well for your presentations.
It was a pleasure to be here and to be able to see what you have done. This meeting matters more, so that others can also possibly see what we are doing together, the government together with all those who, just like those boys who presented their startup, decide to “switch” their lives by believing in the supernatural power of technology today, which gives human beings the possibility to achieve the unimaginable and which itself is unimaginable in the limits of its potential.
Today we can freely say something that until not very long ago would have sounded laughable, that any young man or young woman in Albania can work anywhere in the world without moving from their home, wherever that may be, in Tirana, in Elbasan or in a remote village, as long as they have a computer and are connected to the internet. And not only that, but they can work without leaving their home and be paid many times better than they would be if they left their country and went abroad to work for someone else.
Today this is no longer something to laugh about because it is a reality that is rapidly expanding, integrating into its perimeter more and more young women and men, thanks to the fact that technology places at their disposal tools which the younger generations understand and master much faster than others.
Olta mentioned a figure that is very meaningful from our point of view, the tripling of the number of applicants for the “Startup Albania” programme, which began several years ago and has now become a credible programme and, thanks to that credibility but also thanks to the information spread during this period, it has attracted major interest and a record number of applications, 1,219 applications for financial support ranging from 15,000 euros to 45,000 euros and, for consolidation projects, up to 90,000 euros. These are not loans, but grants that the Albanian government makes available to those who come forward with an interesting idea and with the potential to create a solution that can later create a small company and then perhaps generate a large company.
We are in Elbasan today and Elbasan has another potential as well. It has its vocational school with around 1,400 students, which in itself represents an extraordinarily significant reservoir for a city like Elbasan to nurture new creations of the technology world, to develop and turn ideas into spaces of services and employment, ideas which, without the power of technology, would simply be unreachable utopias through traditional paths of development. What technology has done is something difficult for us to fully grasp, despite the fact that theoretically we may understand it and repeat it. Technology has exponentially increased the speed of development. After entire eras of linear development, today the world has moved into exponential development, meaning from gradual development into a development that is pindaric and almost impossible to perceive in its speed. If until yesterday even technology itself needed 300 days to generate a new smartphone and from one Apple to another one had to wait until the next September, today technology is reaching the point where what is new at the beginning of the week becomes old by the end of the week. What is an invention at the beginning of the week is no longer an exception by the end of the week and, under these conditions, for developing countries like Albania this is a tremendous blessing.
If we were still in the era of linear development, it would be very difficult for us to imagine transformations and growth that today we can imagine as a real possibility for development. Because if, under linear development, typewriters were produced and initially acquired by those who were richer, meaning states, and then passed on to poorer ones and, by the time that generation of production reached poorer countries, the richer countries had already moved on to the next generation of production, with technology there is no longer such a difference. With technology, social status no longer matters, nor even where you are geographically, nor what financial means you possess. If you have talent and perseverance and then also the spark of an idea that makes a difference, you are there to succeed. Naturally, the part where the need arises to have someone beside you, and in this case it is the Albanian government, is the part of that initial financing needed to develop the first steps of an idea. And here we have learned a lesson from this rapid increase in the number of applications, which means that in response to this speed we will also increase the volume of financing.
So, by making a forecast based on the first two years, in 2024 there were 422 applicants, in 2025 there were 536, and we forecast a fund that would grow accordingly. But finding ourselves faced with 1,219 applicants, we will need to send a message and I take this opportunity to say today to all those who have applied that we will not limit ourselves to the number of winners foreseen according to the figures of the previous two years, but we will make extra financing available in the coming weeks and finance additional applicants beyond that figure, trying to increase the financing proportionally to the increase in the number of applicants, naturally on the condition that the applications are considered by the selection commission to have the potential to be financially supported and further developed.
Meanwhile, here in Elbasan we already have 27 schools equipped with smart laboratories, where children from the very first steps begin entering the world of coding. Here in Elbasan we also have a character who does not receive the proper credit for everything we are discussing, and that is Bora Muzhaqi, who for many people is a famous meme, but for me and for the path of this programme is a protagonist without whom we would not have achieved much of what we achieved in the first steps. For this reason, I want to bring Bora’s example and contribution here, but at the same time encourage Bora to use the experience gained from working in this field to motivate, encourage and teach as many young people as possible in the Elbasan region to make the right applications, and at the same time encourage you as well to stick close to Bora so she can help you understand, in cases where your application does not work, how you can make a winning application.
And finally, I want to end where Arian began, with what the two boys who presented their successful application called a bitter beginning because the first time they did not manage to win. It often happens because generally we, and especially Albanian men, especially Albanian boys, not so much women and girls, are very bad losers. A bad loser is someone who cannot accept that they deserved to lose a match, a competition, a challenge and insists on what imagination tells them, that someone cheated them, that someone else without merit took what belonged to them, that here merit is never given to the one who deserves it, that someone paid money or someone else offered promises of family connections and so on and so forth, which is also the path to continuing to remain a loser.
Whereas good losers are those who turn back to themselves and do not sit around inventing reason after reason, fantasising or justifying themselves with the fact that perhaps in one case they may indeed have lost unfairly, but instead motivate one another as a team to do the right thing and win the next match. And even more so on this path, imagine how much competition there will be year after year and how much competition there already is in this world, to understand that being among the winners is not the rule but the exception. And then to understand that dreaming of creating a unicorn means you must be an exception among exceptions. Yet this world belongs precisely to dreamers who dare and certainly if someone has a dream they see with open eyes, they see it because they can realise it. I have never seen with open eyes the dream of becoming a singer because that dream never came to me, since neither my nature nor my mind had the conditions to produce such an idea. But when you see with open eyes that you can reach a peak, then it is only a matter of willpower and strength to climb it, because everyone dreams, but not everyone realises those dreams because not everyone is ready to make all the sacrifices that a dream demands before allowing you to touch it. And in the world of technology everyone has the right to dream big. Everyone has the right to dream of being the next Steve Jobs, beginning with being the Steve Jobs of the school, the Steve Jobs of Elbasan, the Steve Jobs of Albania and then onwards and onwards. Completely normal! But the fact that today, thanks to technology, the possibility of succeeding is just as extraordinary as the speed of technology itself is something you should never forget for a single moment and should keep in mind every time you think about what you will do tomorrow. And naturally here I am speaking about those who have talent in this direction and you who are here, I believe, are here precisely because in one way or another you desire this field and believe in this field.
So, while wishing great success to those who have won, while wishing patience, courage and persistence to those who have not won, while reminding all the girls present here that the number of girls winning in these calls has increased and continues to increase, I wish you all the best, every success and I hope that you will turn Elbasan into a place known from afar as the land of many startups and of many girls and boys who create wellbeing for themselves and for the city, while remaining faithfully here and then going abroad afterwards for pleasure or perhaps for some romantic occasion.
Thank you very much!
