Building digital ecosystems involves promoting sustainability and honing talents, according to industry leaders who participated in the AIBC Eurasia panel entitled “Building digital future together: best practices for creating digital ecosystem.”
The panel was moderated by Zeina Akkawi of PAZ Marketing Management and was held at the Intercontinental Hotel Festival City in Dubai.
“Things do not happen overnight. So it’s a long journey that you need to go through to understand how the ecosystem can be developed from becoming digital,” Maher Al Kaabi of Alserkal Group said as he discussed what a digital ecosystem is and the changes that come with it.
Al Kaabi mentioned that it was in 1995 when the United Arab Emirates started embracing technology.
“Now we’re talking about being one of the smartest cities, the top three globally. For you to do that, you need to have a clear national agenda, UAE agenda,” Al Kaabi said. “So if you go back to the website of UAE, you’ll see there’s a clear strategy, how the government is gonna transform and become very digital in all the services they offer.”
The role of blockchain in enhancing trust
Meanwhile, Kassem Lahham of Bright Wealth Banking, detailed in the panel discussion how blockchain technology is changing the landscape of business, specifically banking, which is part of building a better digital ecosystem.
“We come into a new age of banking, which will be combining traditional banking we know from commodity trading to equity trading and blockchain is something which will give us the security and the safety to bank in a way which is in the long term more than safe,” Lahham said.
Lahham also noted that digital assets have a future in the UAE.
“Dubai has started with VARA which is the virtual asset regulatory body in the UAE, to start preparing for digital assets, to start regulating it in a way that you still have the freedom of moving digital assets, funds around between A and B,” he said.
The importance of collaboration
Sam Katiela of Mamemo Consulting FZCO said building a digital ecosystem needs collaboration.
“We are creating completely new language models. The way of how we used to do business is no longer existing,” Katiela said. “These days it’s not anymore that the people will look for the product, the product finds the people.”
This was echoed by Al Kaabi who said the government is doing a lot of collaborating work with the private sector and the academe.
“There is a lot of collaboration happening between the government and the private sectors and academia,” Al Kaabi said. “So for you to develop an ecosystem, you have to have a very clear plan and a vision to make that happen.”
Dubai attracting talents abroad, honing Emiratis
To be able to achieve its blockchain goal, Al Kaabi and Katiela agreed that there’s a need to attract foreign talent, as well as local talent in the UAE.
Al Kaabi said, “That’s why Dubai NextGen was launched in terms of attracting talent and also making sure the Emirati talent as well are there. So we have a plan for about 100,000 Emirati talents by 2025. They need to be good coders and blockchain and Web3 and so forth.”
“They’re empowered local talents. They’re bringing new talents from abroad, unite them. And that is all the keywords. Unity is the keyword. If you do it alone, you run fast. If you do it in a united manner, you run longer,” Katiela said.
