Minister of Finance H E Ali bin Ahmed Al Kuwari with other dignitaries during the panel discussion held on the sidelines of Doha Forum 2024, yesterday.
Doha, Qatar: The panel session entitled ‘Competitiveness in the Era of Intelligent Economies’ held on the sidelines of the 22nd Doha Forum, yesterday discussed several topics such as directing financial resources to invest in new technology, energy to operate data centers, world-class telecommunications infrastructure, and digital innovation.
Speaking during the session, Minister of Finance H E Ali bin Ahmed Al Kuwari said, “I would like to take this opportunity to thank World Economic Forum for giving us the opportunity to participate in the Fourth Industrial Revolution Center.
He commended the initiative of World Economic on the fourth industrial revolution 4.0. “This is really happening and we are part of that journey and launching the center today.”
Minister Al Kuwari also highlighted the Third Qatar National Development Strategy which focuses on the importance of innovation and diversification.
Speaking regarding leveraging technologies as part of the third national development strategy, he noted “Technology sits at the heart of our industry and this is one of the key sectors we are going to use to achieve the diversification of the economy and the movement from hydrocarbon based economy to a knowledge based economy.”
Making a reference to the Web Summit and launch of Fund of Funds programme to invest more than $1bn in international and regional venture capital funds, Minister Al Kuwari noted that this is to attract funds from the region or internationally to establish the business here in Doha.
Minister of Finance further said “We already have seen so many initiatives such as Ooredoo announced $1bn investment in data center with Nvidia. The Google Cloud Center of Excellence was established in Qatar’s free zones, joining the Microsoft Azure. We see Qatar already taking the position as the opportunities are tremendous. Qatar has one of the fastest Internet speed in the world whether it’s a mobile or fixed lines which give us a good opportunity.”
Qatar is ranked by the IMF, 23 out of 134 countries in talent which means “we are able to attract talents as well as to build the human capital through our sophisticated education system. So we are in a good position to leverage and achieve these goals,” he added.
Qatar is doing very well in the various sectors which include business, aviation, energy, financial systems. “I think we can take advantage of this especially when it comes to the AI going forward,” Minister Al Kuwari said.
Minister of Information Communication Technology and Innovation, Republic of Rwanda, H E Paula Ingabire highlighted the importance of digital economy.
She said, “We’ve been talking about many areas of collaboration between Rwanda and Qatar and I think this becomes another additional area where the two centers can work very closely together for knowledge, skills and technology transfer to happen.”
Minister of Treasury and Finance, Republic of Türkiye, H E Mehmet Şimşek said, Turkiye is a major manufacturing base globally and we are investing significantly in AI preparedness.
That’s really the key in terms of human capital, but also in terms of digital infrastructure.
In the last decade “we have almost doubled R&D spending, it’s still low relative to advanced economies, it’s just over 1.4%. Over 50% of R&D spending is done by private sector, but government does provide huge incentives. We have got over 1300 R&D centers, over 300 design centers and also over 100 techno parks. So these are some of the ecosystem that will help us move up the value chain and stay competitive,” he said.
Administrator, United Nations Development Programme, Achim Steiner said, AI will change every aspect of development, whether it is in education, healthcare or economic capacity.
UNDP does a lot of work with countries to help them assess their digital readiness, their digital public infrastructure strategy because it is critical to be investing today. He said, “We have also begun to work with ITU and UNESCO very much in helping countries in looking at the AI assessment.”
“With Qatar, we began a few years ago to support over 100 countries with their accelerator labs. In over 40% of those accelerator labs at Qatar and Germany co sponsored, AI is now one of the principal areas in which we are discovering innovations within the country. So the accelerator labs have been a tremendous boost to our ability to understand that,” he added.
President and CEO, World Economic Forum, Børge Brende moderated the panel discussion.
