Doha, Qatar: Qatar possesses a sophisticated infrastructure and continues its efforts to offer the enticements of investment, entrepreneurship and building the local technological potential, in addition to increasing the work opportunities in information technology with the aim of supporting the economic diversity to achieve the goals of the Qatar National Vision 2030.
Speaking to The Peninsula on the sidelines of recently held Web Summit Qatar 2024, Dr. Ahmed K Elmagarmid (pictured), Acting Vice President of Research, and Executive Director of Qatar Computing Research Institute at Hamad Bin Khalifa University highlighted how the summit being held for the first time in the region offers opportunities for local entrepreneurs and startups.
Web Summit Qatar 2024 is an amazing event and opportunity as this is the first of its kind in the Middle East and outside of Europe and the US. This is an opportunity for the local entrepreneur community to meet with likeminded people to discuss and make deals. Innovators and entrepreneurs are showcasing their technologies, Dr. Elmagarmid noted.
He added, “We have HBKU, QRDI, QSTP booths and each of these have an innovation ecosystem showing their technologies. In Qatar Computing Research Institute, we have about six to seven technologies that we are showing here and they are all amazing opportunities.”
Venture capital is here, ideas and technologies are here. There are a lot of activities that are going on, so all of these feed into this growth that is being created here in Qatar. This is in line with Third National Development Strategy (NDS3) 2024-2030 (which is the final phase towards accomplishing the Qatar National Vision 2030) but also with the Qatar Digital Agenda and also Qatar AI strategy, he said.
Speaking about AI, Dr. Elmagarmid said, “It’s a young market and a new technology that has to be incorporated into the different businesses. So it’s going to take a while and definitely there is a strong need. AI will accelerate the progress as it plays a key role whether it is in healthcare, energy, media, and sports. AI needs three things - infrastructure, data and skills. The infrastructure is being built tremendously here with the hyperscalers like Microsoft, Google; the data is being worked on and prepared.”
Qatar is going beyond digital transformation to actually an AI transformation because AI transformation needs data in order to create predictive systems. Web Summit is a great event and HBKU is proud to be part of it and not only to be participating here but actually contributing technologies that’s being showcased, Dr. Elmagarmid underscored.
The world’s largest tech event’s debut in the Middle East and Africa, saw a huge turnout from international tech giants.
