My name is Mohammed Sharkawi, and EMEA Commerce exists because I kept being the bridge.
Where I come from
I grew up between Egypt and the Netherlands — Arabic at home, Dutch at school, English everywhere in between. That kind of upbringing teaches you something specific: most misunderstandings between cultures aren't really about culture. They're about people not knowing how to ask the question, or not knowing they need to ask at all. I spent my early years translating for family. Later, I started translating for businesses — without realising that was a profession.
I studied Business IT at Saxion University of Applied Sciences, graduating in 2018. From there I joined the team behind the Netherlands' OV-chipkaart and NS rail systems — one of the country's largest pieces of working infrastructure. It taught me how processes hold up under pressure, how procurement actually works inside serious Dutch organisations, and how much reliability matters before a deal becomes a relationship.
In parallel, my family in Alexandria and across the Arab world kept asking the same kind of question, over and over: “Do you know someone in Europe who…?” By 2020, when the lockdown pushed every conversation online, I realised those informal introductions had quietly become a network — and that network was the most valuable thing I owned. I registered EMEA Commerce in 2018, but it became my full focus when the network started producing real commercial demand on both sides.
What I actually do
EMEA Commerce is a sourcing and market-entry consultancy. In practice, that means three things:
- For European companies entering MENA or Africa, I run end-to-end market-entry — regulatory mapping, distributor identification, contract negotiation in the local language, and the cultural translation in between.
- For MENA and African producers entering Europe, I do the inverse: EU compliance, buyer matching, positioning, and the negotiation that gets a first European order signed.
- For both sides, I stay in the room until the deal works — not just the introduction.
I work principal-only. When you engage EMEA Commerce, you're working with me — not a junior account manager, not an offshored research team, not an AI assistant pretending to be me on WhatsApp. I cap engagements so I can keep that promise. The deals I take, I close myself.
The first deal
My first major commercial engagement opened a corridor between an Egyptian producer and a Dutch importer. What stays with me is how easily it could have collapsed in the first month — over a phrase mistranslated in an email, a payment-term misunderstanding, a quiet assumption on one side that the other side already knew the rules. None of that was about the product, the price, or the logistics. All of it was about whether someone in the room had the standing to say “I think what they actually mean is this,” in three languages, with credibility on both ends.
That deal taught me what the business is.
Why EMEA, and why now
Europe needs new sourcing corridors. MENA and Africa have a generation of producers ready for European-scale buyers but lacking the on-the-ground translation between their reality and the EU's. The next ten years will redraw a lot of trade routes. There's a meaningful role for people who can sit credibly on both sides of those routes — and very few of them exist.
If we work together
You can reach me directly. In English, Dutch, or Arabic. By email, by Calendly, or by WhatsApp. I reply within two business hours, Sunday through Thursday, 09:00–18:00 CET. Most engagements start with a 20-minute discovery call where I tell you whether I'm the right person for your situation — and if I'm not, I tell you who is.
— Mohammed Sharkawi
Founder, EMEA Commerce