Anatoly Motkin, President of StrategEast
Doha, Qatar: As the host of major international events, from the FIFA World Cup 2022 to the Web Summit 2024, Qatar demonstrates its eagerness to remain a global champion in a sophisticated business environment, said an official.
Speaking to The Peninsula, Anatoly Motkin, President of StrategEast, said “In recent years Qatar has undertaken a massive digital transformation from a traditional natural resource-based economic model to a knowledge-driven one. That important transformation is crucial in a world where people compete with AI and the future of jobs and economic sustainability depends on the ability of the countries to reinvent themselves.”
“Today, in the digital economy, you can’t attract top tier global talent by generous job offers. The only thing that is able to make brilliant minds move to a new country is a unique intellectual challenge. Qatar and other Gulf states have rich track records demonstrating their ability to cope with global challenges and develop ambitious projects that inevitably would become attractive to international talent, he added.
Commenting about the region’s developing industry, Motkin noted, for now, the critical investments attracted to the Gulf are not monetary but human capital investments. It means that leading tech companies are literally excited to start working in the Gulf as one of the most promising developing regions in the world—investments at the level of human capital, not monetary capital.
Keeping the momentum it’s just a matter of several years before the Gulf becomes the global hub of digital excellence and the capital investments would follow.
Speaking regarding how Central Asian countries can help in developing the IT industry in Qatar and the region, he stated, keeping the highest level of development and delivery of digital products, the region of Central Asia provides today a unique opportunity for the Gulf states to consume digital services from Central Asia at the level they would expect from Silicon Valley but ten times cheaper and a way better than many other countries in the global South are providing today.
The digital collaboration between Central Asia and the Gulf is a win-win for both. For Central Asia, it’s about scaling up the IT export and the Gulf is getting the highest level of digital services along with knowledge transfer and the ability to soft land those companies in the Gulf scaling up the local digital workforce in the region.
Sharing the experience of workforce and startups pipeline development, international companies attraction are just a minor part of mutual interest. By extending the Qatari digital footprint to Central Asia will significantly enforce the digital capacity of Qatar making it one of the global digital sprinters and a regional role model, Motkin added.
