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Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you are sure to have heard of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML): it is the current buzzword, and every technology company worth its salt talks about how AI is going to transform everything.
The strange thing is that most business leaders, especially in consumer businesses, claim to be excited about AI, but they will be hard-pressed to give a tangible example of how AI has been used in their business, or what difference it has made to business performance.
So, is this all just hype, or is there some real impact that AI is going to have on businesses? If you think about your everyday life, it is almost certain that AI-based technologies are an integral part of your everyday experience.
See content and posts that you like on social media? Powered by AI algorithms.
Talk to your smartphone assistant to search for answers, or set a reminder? AI again. Order food on a food aggregator app, and chat with customer support? You’re likely talking to a machine for the first few minutes.
If you watched the latest Google I/O, you’d have seen the new Duplex AI, where it can have whole conversations with real humans, and do things like book appointments for you.
AI is slowly but surely transforming the way consumers experience the world by allowing for personalized and easy experiences.
The algorithms are able to gobble up the vast amounts of data created every second, and use it to predict and take decisions on what is most likely to be relevant and appeal to different people.
This is leading to consumers increasingly living in an “easyverse,” an easy universe of connected and seamless experiences.
What’s more, AI and ML gets better at its job as it learns from data and interactions.
For any business to survive, being able to be part of this easyverse, and provide consumers with the experience they have come to expect is critical. To be able to compete, deploying AI is going to be mission critical.
So, what are the areas where AI is likely to have maximal impact in the short-term? While there are several long-term bets being made, from self-driving cars to cyborg technology or robots as friends, here are a few of the tangible competitive advantages consumer businesses should be looking for immediately.
1. Quicker, better insights
Say a business wants to know why sales are down the previous week. The traditional way would have taken a team of analysts a few days to come up with answers, and the accuracy of these answers would be limited by what questions have been asked. With AI, tens of thousands of questions can be processed, and the impact of these factors on the business can be assessed in mere seconds.
It can throw up surprising insights on what action is likely to have most impact on the business. This can be an incredible advantage in a fast moving and evolving environment.
2. Personalized and connected experiences
AI can learn from your consumer’s behavior, and make predictions of what they may like.
This allows for the most relevant products and recommendations to be served up.
In various studies, it has been proven that personalization improves conversion by as much as 30%-50%. Think big marketplaces like Amazon, where each customer sees a different set of products and recommendations based on what is most relevant.
This is now easily possible on your brand website!
3. Better, 24x7 customer service
Deploying AI as chatbots and using natural language processing algorithms as call agents means that they can do a credible job of handling and resolving the vast majority of routine queries that typically hit customer service centers. This allows for quicker resolution, 24x7 service, lower cost and, of course, happier customers!
4. Automation, personalization of campaigns, and marketing ROI
Marketing is typically an area with a lot of spend and where it is difficult to keep track of return on investment (ROI).
As American marketer John Wanamaker famously said: “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” With AI tools, it is now possible to manage campaigns on an individual level, with each consumer being put on their personalized lifecycle, with messaging that is almost unique, tailored to their unique behavior and needs.
It is also possible to track thousands of signals across the marketing lifecycle, both in traditional and digital media to continually optimize the marketing mix and improve sales performance and marketing ROI. Indeed, the holy grail for any marketer!
5. New powerful streams of data from offline stores
The past decade has been a story of online marketplaces and e-commerce stealing consumers away from offline retail.
While convenience and easy experiences are an important factor, with the advent of omni-channel retail, offline retailers are able to hold their own and, in fact, have an edge in providing consumers with a great experience.
A big gap however, continues to be the amount of data available, and how it can be used to create personalized experiences, and to optimize the business. In the online world, you know who is visiting the mobile site or app, what they are looking at, how much time they are spending, and so on and so forth. This was typically information that was just not available offline.
Now with AI tools including computer vision and natural language processing, it is possible to anonymize and track visitors to store, generate style profiles, track trends, identify hot zones and in effect create an offline clickstream.
This data can have profound impact on the consumer experience and business results- with sales impact of upwards of 10%!
These are just a few of the key areas where every consumer business should be looking to deploy AI-powered solutions so as to be able to win with their consumers.
There are several reasons as to why, a lot of businesses are not able to make meaningful progress in driving digital transformation that delivers results, let alone deploying AI within the business; but that is a conversation for another time!
source: entrepreneur
Several ways in which innovation in AI and machine learning (ML) will change our lives in the next five years.
If there is one technology that has become the buzzword of this decade, it would be artificial intelligence (AI).
In the beginning of 2010s, consumer natural-language processing (NLP) allowed us to talk to our phones and control smart home appliances reliably. At the time, a lot of people expected NLP to explode in other domains, but it never really materialized, either because of poor implementations or a focus on other types of development.
However, over the next decade, we can expect to see NLP put to use in complex software to lower the barrier to entry. For example, customer relationship management (CRM) software, which is crucial for any business, is finding higher adoption among salespeople thanks to conversational AI.
The application of AI in different softwares also helps in identifying repetitive tasks and automating them, thereby improving employee productivity.
With AI, business applications will be able to answer questions, or help users navigate interfaces, and cloud vendors will need less support personnel to manage their load.
An emphasis on diversity in development will create a landscape where NLP is better at understanding different accents and speaking styles.
When more businesses yield the benefits of NLP-powered analytics and conversational interfaces, the demand for single-vendor solutions will increase. Once C-level executives realize they can ask AI assistants to generate reports for them on the fly, they will want this functionality to work across their business, not just in one department where they've rolled out new technology.
The organizations that will be most successful using AI over the next decade are the ones implementing single-vendor technology platforms today. If data is scattered in applications using different data models, it's going to be difficult to work with.
But when all data is on a single platform, it's much easier to feed it into a machine-learning algorithm. The more data that's available, the more useful the predictions and machine-learning models are going to be.
There exists a vast scope of innovation in AI and machine learning (ML), which we can hope to see in the next five years, in the following ways:
Hyperpersonalization Hyperpersonalization will increase productivity for business software users. This decade saw the rise of algorithmic (rather than chronological) social media timelines, which increased usage.
For business software, there is a huge opportunity to create interfaces that intelligently direct the user's attention.
Imagine a CRM that learns from an organization's sales history, and guides reps to work more productively based on their work habits.
Ubiquitous AI data cleansing A lot more areas will implement AI data cleansing. Smaller organizations will begin to expect AI functionality in things like spreadsheets, where they'll be able to parse information out of addresses, or clean up inconsistencies. Larger organizations will benefit from AI that makes their data more consumable for analytics or preps it for migration from one application to another.
Auto-tagging to become the norm Today, smartphones can recognize and tag objects in photos, making the personal photo library much more searchable. Soon, we will start to see business applications auto-tag information to make it much more accessible.
Today, business owners can find their top customers in a CRM by running a report, and sorting by revenue. In the next five years, they will be able to search "top customers," and the CRM will know what they are looking for.
source: entrepreneurntrepreneur
Recipients also include UAE-based Venture Capital firm Global Ventures
The Abu Dhabi Investment Office (ADIO) has invested 60 million UAE dirhams ($16.3 million) in a new batch of startups and fund managers through its Ventures Fund.
The recipients, according to ADIO, include: Securrency, TruKKer, Sarwa, YACOB and Okadoc. These startups are innovation-focused companies that are either based in Abu Dhabi or expanding into the emirate.
ADIO also signed its first investment in a Venture Capital (VC) firm, UAE-based Global Ventures, it said in the statement.
The VC firm received funding through the Ventures Fund’s New Fund Manager Programme, which matches every dirham raised by the VC in the private market.
The company is a growth-focused VC investing in revenue-generating enterprise technology companies that can scale and create impact in emerging markets.
Tariq Bin Hendi, Director General of ADIO, said: “The Ventures Fund was created to deepen Abu Dhabi’s innovation ecosystem and ensure big thinking is not constrained by limited capital.
Once a startup is operational, Abu Dhabi is safe ground for innovation and a place where entrepreneurs can confidently take commercial and creative risks. ADIO is passionate about supporting entrepreneurs, we want to give startups the opportunity to become the next regional, or perhaps even global, tech success story.”
Ventures Fund opened in May 2019 as an initiative of the Abu Dhabi Government’s Ghadan 21 accelerator programme.
The fund is supporting the growth of Abu Dhabi’s startup and venture capital ecosystem by increasing access to capital and stimulating the number of high skilled jobs in the UAE capital’s growing technology sector.
source: zawya
As any startup will attest, agility and quick response to market demand is key to survival. The same can be applied to other stakeholders in the startup ecosystem.
Recently, the Middle East and North Africa’s capital cities have scrambled to establish entrepreneurship hubs and so the competition has intensified, particularly for the smaller nations whose budgets do not match the deep pockets of some of their neighbour’s.
In the midst of decrees and announcements, Bahrain has managed to establish a business environment that the Milken Institute believes will position the country as a “major hub for finance, technology and innovation”.
Since 2015, foreign direct investment (FDI) has increased from 0.2 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) to 4 per cent in 2018.
The number of firms in the private sector has increased by 50 per cent alongside a 30 per cent rise in the number of jobs in the private sector according to data from the Labour Market Regulatory Authority.
According to Milken’s report, micro, small and medium-sized enterprises account for 30 per cent of GDP.
Fuelling this growth has been Bahrain's geographic position and its proximity to Saudi Arabia, providing easy access to the region's largest market.
But now that the Kingdom has embraced entrepreneurship and has pushed through several agendas and government initiatives to encourage foreign investment, Bahrain risks losing its competitive edge.
We spoke with Pakiza Abdulrahman, manager of startups at the Bahrain Economic Development Board (EDB), a government agency tasked with attracting investment and supporting private sector growth.
EDB’s Startup Bahrain initiative has been instrumental in encouraging entrepreneurship, but how much involvement should the government have?
Governments should play an enabling role and not lead the innovation agenda. We want to enable the ecosystem to sit together and collaborate and bring to the table the most important matters that we as regulators should fix and improve.
Bahrain is strategically positioning itself as a gateway to the global market, particularly for Egyptian and Mena-based startups.
We have very close proximity to the largest market in the Middle East [Saudi Arabia]. Our mandate is to diversify the economy, attract FDI and create jobs that are in line with the knowledge economy and Bahrain’s 2030 Vision.
Saudi is a huge market to navigate, it is easier to come in as a GCC-based operation. What we try to do in Bahrain, is to focus on incentives and benefits that are provided to startups setting up in the country.
We don’t have a freezone area, the whole country is open to 100 per cent foreign ownership.
As our strategic position with the East and West, we’re positioning ourselves for different niches.
What are these niches?
Fintech, IOT [internet of things], e-commerce, logistics. Game development and publishing has been something really big for Bahrain recently. The calibre [of talent] in the country is high, they’re bilingual, tech savvy, they know the culture of Saudi and the Middle Eastern market and we have high mobile penetration.
Where are the startups that set up in Bahrain from?
The majority of startups are coming from the UK, South East Asia, India, Singapore and the Middle East, from Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt. Companies from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait are also coming. It is 30-40 per cent cheaper to set up here than in the UAE. It is a 50:50 ratio split of Bahraini and resident founders of startups and foreign companies.
Amazon chose Bahrain to launch its Amazon Web Services (AWS), what impact has that had?
The Amazon impact has been huge, it gives testament to the strong ICT infrastructure in Bahrain, the connectiveness with other data centres globally, it gives testament of the eagerness of the government to move to the cloud.
We have a cloud-first policy, all government entities have to be on the cloud, that created huge hype in the country and pushed the private sector banks that were reluctant to go on the cloud.
It has also opened up a huge opportunity for local talent to be upskilled.
Saudi Arabia is embracing entrepreneurship, how can Bahrain maintain its advantage as a gateway to the country?
We’re a small market, we need to be very creative and strategic in the way we tackle this challenge. We have been doing so by opening up to global markets, empowering education among different sections in the ecosystem, whether it's youngsters or early retirees from government programmes with ideas and skills they need to be directed.
This is what we do at Startup Bahrain – we keep the momentum and rooting back to the single platform that gives you all of this – it is community driven we back it up and it grows as the community grows. We do a lot of roundtables to listen to the startups and try to shape up the market and shape up the regulation as they need.
Markets in KSA and UAE are huge and saturated as well, sometimes for South Korean companies and Asian and Arab-based companies, they find it hard to navigate.
At EDB, we handhold startups and accelerators throughout the whole process of registration, ensuring they come out of it with meaningful relationships and introduce them to key decision makers.
source: wamda
Technology startups incubated by the Badir Program for Technology Incubators and Accelerators, one of the leading initiatives of King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST), closed 2019 on a high note, raising a record SR236 million ($62.93 million) led by venture capital firms, individual investors, private companies, and governmental institutions.
The total funding for startups increased to SR508 million ($135.47 million) from 2010 until the end of December 2019 across 184 deals, according to a statistical report compiled by the Business Incubators and Accelerators Company (BIAC), which manages and operates the Badir Program.
The report revealed that venture capital firms were the most active in terms of funding size, investing SR 203 million into startups, equivalent to 40% of the total amount of funding and investment, while private sector companies provided SR 168 million, 33% of the total funding.
BIAC report further disclosed that the total financing by individual investors amounted to SR 104 million, 20% of the total amount of funding, followed by government institutions who invested SR 35 million, 7% of the total investment volume.
The increase in investments reflects the maturing startup environment in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the continued and growing interest of local and international investors.
Furthermore, the number of startups incubated in the Badir Program rose to 655 companies since inception until the end of the third quarter of 2019.
The Badir Program offers one of the most important national and innovative environments in the field of entrepreneurship.
The Program was established in 2007 by the King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology, to support and provide opportunities for technology- and innovation-based business enterprises.
Nawaf Al Sahhaf, the Chief Executive Officer of BIAC, said: “As the startup environment is thriving in Saudi Arabia, we have seen more of the startups succeed in receiving significant investments from several investors.
The success of startups provides an incentive for encouraging and enhancing the entrepreneurship environment in the market."
When the Badir Program incubates a technological startup company, it facilitates funding by providing a platform by connecting investors and entrepreneurs through its annually-held "Projects Presentation Day" program.
A state-owned subsidiary of the Saudi Technology Development and Investment Company (TAQNIA) – owned by the Public Investment Fund (PIF) – BIAC operates and manages entrepreneurship support platforms, innovation and technology transfer programs.
It also offers project management and business support with specialized consultancy and training services.
Offering an array of services in over nine different cities in the Kingdom, BIAC operates and manages 10 incubators and 8 accelerators in various fields, most notably the Badir Program's 8 incubators in 7 regions.
In addition, BIAC manages and operates the Saudi Innovation Center for Water Technology Program; the Fast Track to Innovation Program; the Innovation Center for Industry 4.0; the KAMIN Program for raising industrial capabilities and enhancing the capabilities of small- and medium-sized industrial enterprises; the Industrial Establishments Accelerator; Haramein Technology Accelerator; Badir Accelerator, and the Inventions Transfer Accelerator.
source: saudigazette
Unencumbered by heavily customized legacy systems, Middel East enterprises may have a clearer path toward leveraging IT to overhaul how they do businesses than companies on other regions.
Is the Middle East lagging behind in digital transformation? To a large degree, it depends on which metrics are used to measure digital transformation, and your perspective on how far along enterprises in the rest of the world are on the path to fundamentally change how they use technology, human resources and business processes to improve their performance and value to customers.
Overall, investment in IT in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is growing, with spending in the region having been projected by Gartner to rise 1.8 percent to reach US$160 billion in 2019. Spending on areas of enterprise IT often associated with digital transformation is rising significantly, with sales of software as a service expected to jump by 25 percent during the course of last year.
Spending is expected to jump by 19 percent to reach nearly US$3 billion for CRM, and to increase by 12 percent to hit $1.2 billion for BI, analytics, and advanced analytics (including AI).
Despite the growth of SaaS in the region, MENA still falls below the global average for cloud spending as a percentage of the total enterprise IT budget. "They are six to seven years behind U.S. spending on cloud – some of that is lack of availability of hyperscale cloud providers, and we are also facing in this region a preference for on-prem," said John Lovelock, a research vice president at Gartner.
Cloud ERP, for example is still in the $300 million range for the region.
"It's a decent growth rate but not what we see in the rest of the world -- at a certain point we're going to need to see 100 percent to 200 percent growth rates to get cloud into the range of the rest of the world," Lovelock said.
Cloud spending is not a direct indicator of digital transformation, but the cloud does form part of the fabric that allows digital transformation to take place.
In the 2019 IMD Digital Competitiveness Ranking, only the UAE, Qatar and Saudi Arabia really featured, with the UAE placing 12th overall.
Digital transformation is a global struggle
While these statistics paint a picture of more work to be done, they also do not fully represent the global realities.
There is an assumption that enterprises in the rest of the world are well on the road to digital transformation, said Ahmed Hasan, global head of Customer Engagement Marketing at Spark44, a provider of content and community management, CRM, data planning and marketing services for businesses. "But in our experience, this is very much not the case.
Many other regions are struggling with synthesising digital transformation into meaningful valuable customer experiences or even into an operational efficiency."
Hasan adds that it is therefore in some respects an advantage to be a laggard in the area of digital transformation. He believes that "slow to adopt" regions can actually benefit from the experiences and realities faced elsewhere to identify transformation projects that are more likely to have a greater chance of sustained success.
The Middle East is better positioned for digital transformation than many other regions because it is not over-encumbered with complex legacy IT systems that have been heavily customised over time, according to Alan Pelz-Sharpe, founder of research and analysis consultancy Deep Analysis and author of bestseller "Practical Artificial Intelligence - An Enterprise Playbook."
"It is easier to leapfrog innovation when you have a fairly basic starting point tech-wise. Clearly Dubai is leading the charge in the Middle East; its Smart Dubai initiative, though very ambitious, has set the tone for others to follow."
Smart Dubai, the government entity entrusted with driving Dubai's digital transformation projects, already has for example a mature blockchain strategy, launched in early 2016, which has made the city a global leader in blockchain in government, with some signature projects such as DubaiPay, an online payment portal.
The Middle East is at various stages of the digital transformation journey, said Shady Fathalla, business Development Manager at Ciklum, a custom software development company headquartered in London with an office in Dubai. Fathalla explains that the Gulf Cooperation Council countries of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, and Oman, are under pressure to diversify their oil-based economies and have announced several initiatives and directives to transform the societies and the governments.
Governments help drive digital transformation
Digital transformation is at the heart of many of the forward-looking initiatives put in place by the governments of the region, such as the Saudi Vision 2030, the New Kuwait 2035 Vision, the Qatar National Vision 2030 and the UAE's 2021 vision.
Fathalla believes that countries like the UAE and Bahrain are leading in terms of digital transformation, especially in the e-government and financial sectors, but Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman and Egypt are also taking remarkable steps forward.
"The Dubai Government – which is a pioneer in Government digitalisation – has announced its last paper transaction to be in 2021. What's more, the citizens themselves are also playing a big part of the Middle East's digitisation journey," Fathalla said. "As measured by digital consumer adoption, the UAE, Qatar, and Bahrain are among the top countries in the world when it comes to digital readiness, with more than 100 percent smartphone penetration and more than 70 percent social media adoption," Fathallla said.
Fathalla adds that the oil and gas industry in the GCC is looking at digital transformation as a priority to increase efficiency and create competitive advantage in the oil and gas market. The CEO of Abu Dhabi's National Oil Company (ADNOC), Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber announced last year that "Industry 4.0" will be at the heart of ADNOC business.
"For us Industry 4.0 is utilising data and technology to really transform our business, to make it more efficient, and to empower our people," explained Abdul Nasser Al Mughairbi, senior vice president, digital function, at Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC), in an interview with CIO Middle East.
The Middle East, though, is still at a stage where it needs to import the skills required to make digital transformation possible from other places, with countries like the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Qatar being the major investors in digital transformation infrastructure and expertise, according to Bernado Jun, managing director of Spark44 Middle East and North Africa.
Culture can hold back transformation
"The Middle East is a diverse and geopolitically volatile region, with some markets lacking the infrastructure for digital transformation and other markets with the infrastructure but without the stability to have digital transformation at speed and at scale," Jun said.
"So, the region as a whole is lagging behind, although some countries are investing heavily with the ambition to be leading countries in digital transformation in the near future," he added.
One challenge holding back digital transformation is the way trust and honour function as cultural concepts in the Middle East, said Annalisa Nash Fernandez, an intercultural strategist at BecauseCulture, a consultancy focusing on cultural elements in technology and business strategy. "Trust is deeply rooted in long-term social relationships, like in Asian cultures, which is why influencer marketing has proven so successful in the region," Fernandez said. "Influencers have replicated values of trust and personal relationships in a digital context" in the Middle East, Fernandez said, adding that once enterprise leaders do the same, digital transformation in the Middle East will catch up to, and likely surpass other regions.
Deep Analysis' Pelz-Sharpe also believes that the biggest factors impacting the region are cultural and people-related, rather than technological.
"The Middle East has access to the same technology as the rest of the world, however there are skills shortages that impact the rate of change that is possible."
Interest in digital transformation grows
Interest in digital transformation in the region, though, has encouraged Ciklum to extend its services to the Middle East, bringing its global delivery model for software services to the region. The approach allows clients to select appropriate talent from its large resources pool for software projects, and is being used by Middle Eastern startups as well as regional incubators and accelerators to increase the scale of digital transformation, Ciklum's Gathalla said.
Cikulm's Fathalla says that while the gap between the Middle East's digital transformation and that of the rest of the world is shrinking -- mainly due to government investments -- the story is a little different when it comes to the private sector.
He explains that investment in digital transformation is not at the required level, and contribution to the overall countries' GDP by digital business is lower compared to those in countries considered as leaders in digitisation and digital economies. "But this will improve over the coming years," he said.
Spark44's Jun cautions that companies in the Middle East needs to find the right balance between importing expertise and growing it internally. He says it is easier to import expertise to show short-term results and to showcase your "transformation credentials" by proudly communicating that one is working with a world-class consultancy. "However, for companies to be competitive in the long term, they need to invest in also nurturing and growing the talent at a local level," he said.
"Transformation by definition is a continuous process and one cannot expect to find the best answer for one's company only from the outside," Jun added, saying that that CIOs needs to be more invested in the company's human capital growth plan, working closely with the HR department to fine-tune recruitment policies and learning and development plans, based on the key skills that the company will need in the longer term.
Digital transformation is being tackled at a governmental and structural level, but more needs to be done to encourage the private sector to embrace this change and to take advantage of the opportunity to leapfrog in terms of innovation through learning from other countries.
source: cio
The Middle East has realised only eight per cent of its overall digital potential, compared with 15pc in Western Europe and 18pc in the US, a top Bahrain government official has said.
According to Information and eGovernment Authority (iGA) chief executive Mohammed Ali Al Qaed there is a lot of room for digital growth in the Middle East and North Africa (Mena) region, where just 8pc of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) have an Internet presence, 10 times less than in the US.
“Only 1.5pc of retail sales in Mena are online, which is five times less than the US. Digital comprises 4.1pc of the Middle East economy and its contribution to GDP is half that of the US,” he said.
The official was speaking during the BBK Digital Economy Forum and Expo 2020 at the Four Seasons Hotel Bahrain Bay.
Highlighting the Bahrain government’s vision for digital transformation, Mr Al Qaed said the kingdom’s internationally acknowledged successes in attracting investment to its information and communications technology (ICT) industry is built on the back of robust legislation and infrastructure that it has spent years building.
This landscape has allowed for the application of modern technologies in a range of areas and for the development of skills required to implement them.
“Dynamic, competitive markets and an innovative private sector are what drive digital economies,” he said.
“Our goal is for the private sector to take the lead in researching and developing emerging technologies; identifying and supplying innovative solutions; and creating opportunities to improve export revenues. We also welcome their contributions in helping us create even more digital-friendly economic policies.”
The drive to digitalisation is led by the vision of His Majesty King Hamad to make ICT investment a pillar for socioeconomic growth in the kingdom.
The official asserted that the government has helped to encourage innovation and stimulate economic growth through the formation of an artificial intelligence (AI) and emerging technologies governance committee and the passing of laws protecting personal data and electronic transactions.
This is in addition to providing an open data portal and formulating a comprehensive AI strategy in 2020 to enhance government performance and productivity.
Highlighting the importance of digital tools in improving living standards, fighting poverty, protecting the environment, and enhancing the quality of health and education, he said digitalisation also has a key role in creating job opportunities, as each digital job can potentially have the trickle-down effect of creating two to four further jobs in other areas.
Mr Al Qaed also presented key findings from the United Nations Digital Economy Report, which showed that the digital economy now makes up between 4.5pc and 15.5pc of the gross world product (GWP).
The report also found that the US and China contribute 75pc of all patents related to blockchain technology, 50pc of the world’s expenditure on the Internet of Things (IoT), and more than 75pc of the world market’s public cloud computing.
source: zawya
The name "Neom" was constructed from two words. The first three letters form the Ancient Greek prefix neo- meaning “new”. The fourth letter is from the abbreviation of Mostaqbal, an Arabic word meaning “future.”
Where will be "Neom" build?
The Neom project is located in Tabuk, Saudi Arabia in the northwest of the Kingdom, extended along with Aqaba Gulf and 468 km of coastline with beaches and coral reefs, as well as mountains up to 2,500 m high, with a total area of around 26,500 sq. km.
What is it's Goal?
Neom (styled NEOM; Arabic: نيوم Niyūm) is a Saudi project for a smart and tourist cross-border city planned for construction, The project is located in the far north-west of Saudi Arabia it will be constructed in Tabuk. It includes marine land located within the Egyptian and Jordanian borders. It will provide many investment opportunities with a total area of 26,500 km2 (10,200 sq mi) and will extend 460 km on the coast of the Red Sea.
What are the purposes of its Goal?
The project aims to transform Saudi Arabia into a leading global model in various aspects, one of the main objectives of the project is to seek ways of cooperation and investment with a wide network of international investors and innovators, and aims to focus on advanced industries and advanced technology. The first phase will be completed by 2025. The project was supported and funded by the Saudi Public Investment Fund of $ 500 billion.
Vision:
The city was announced by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman at the Future Investment Initiative conference in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on October 24, 2017. He said it will operate independently from the “existing governmental framework” with its own tax and labor laws and an "autonomous judicial system."
The initiative emerged from Saudi Vision 2030, a plan that seeks to reduce Saudi Arabia's dependence on oil, diversify its economy, and develop public service sectors. Ghanem Nuseibeh told Inverse that the Saudi intention was "..to shift from oil to high tech and put Saudi kingdom at the forefront of technological advances. This is the post-oil era. These countries are trying to flourish beyond oil exporting and the ones who don’t will be left behind." The German Klaus Kleinfeld, former chairman and CEO of Alcoa Inc., and former president and CEO of Siemens AG, will direct the development of the city. Plans call for robots to perform functions such as security, logistics, home delivery, and caregiving and for the city to be powered solely with wind and solar power. Because the city will be designed and constructed from scratch, other innovations in infrastructure and mobility have been suggested. Planning and construction will be initiated with $500 billion from the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia and international investors. The first phase of the project is scheduled for completion by 2025.
For High Technologies > Losing List:
Oil Based Fuel Vehicles will be gone
Paper Printed Money will be gone
Taxi with Driver and Delivery Man will be fired
All the Personal Assistants will be fired
Computer of today will be lost from market
High Technologies > Gaining List:
Electric Rechargable Vehicles will Come
Digital Transit will take place of Money
Driverless less vehicle and Drone delivery
Robot will be replaced with Personal Assistant
Regenerative Medicine
Quantum Computing
CRISPR Cas-9 (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats)
Elimination of > Huntington, Parkinson etc.
source: dev.to
Egypt’s sovereign wealth fund signed on Monday a partnership with UK-based private equity firm Actis to help allure and steer private investment into the North African country.
The two parties will also cooperate in a number of high-profile areas, in particular energy and infrastructure.
Signed in London on the sidelines of the UK-Africa Investment Summit, the memorandum of understanding will directly support the Egyptian fund’s “objective to attract and steer private investment toward critical sectors for Egypt’s economy,” Actis said in a statement.
The signing of the memo was witnessed by Egypt’s Planning Minister Hala el-Saeed and Elizabeth Truss, Secretary of State for International Trade and President of the Board of the Trade and Minister for Women and Equalities from the UK Government.
“This cooperation agreement will support energy transition and underscores “a new chapter for sustainable, high-quality UK investment in key markets such as Egypt.” Minister Hala el-Saeed said.
In February 2019, Egypt set up the fund to take control of some of the government’s most promising assets in industries such as power and real estate and invite private investors to develop them.
The fund has a paid-in capital of 1 billion Egyptian pounds ($63.5 million).
Yet, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said in October the capital could rise to as much as multi trillion pounds.
It will start off by selling a 25-year concession, owned by the state Egyptian Electricity Holding Co, to operate three 4.8GW power plants built by Siemens under a €6 billion ($6.65 billion) deal signed in 2015.
Actis has offered to help sell one of the three plants, its chief executive Ayman Soliman said in the statement.
“We consider Actis’s proposal to be a strong sign reflecting its underlying interest in expanding its investments in Egypt and we look forward to unlocking further appetite and value through such partnerships,” Soliman said.
Actis’ currently energy portfolio in Africa includes Lekela, 1GW of wind across Egypt, Senegal, and South Africa; Azura a world class IPP focused on baseload generation across Nigeria, Senegal, and Mozambique.
It also includes Biotherm, a pan-African wind and solar platform which involves Kenya’s largest wind farm and Eneo, the utility of Cameroon.
source: amwalalghad
Dubai Startup Hub has launched the fifth cycle of its Dubai Smartpreneur Competition that seeks submissions from startups offering solutions related to the Expo 2020 Dubai.
Dubai Startup Hub, the entrepreneurship arm of Dubai Chamber of Commerce and Industry, has launched the fifth cycle of its Dubai Smartpreneur Competition that seeks submissions from startups offering solutions related to the Expo 2020 Dubai sub-themes of Opportunity, Mobility and Sustainability.
Open to all entrepreneurs in the UAE and abroad, the competition gives founders an opportunity to become part of Dubai Government’s strategy to elevate the city into a global platform for innovative startups. This year’s edition is also in line with the vision of HH Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, to transform the emirate into one of the world’s smartest cities.
The Dubai Smartpreneur Competition awards the top three winners a combined total of AED150,000 in cash prizes, in addition to a startup support package, mentorship opportunities, access to overseas trade missions, and Dubai Chamber events and trainings.
To be eligible to participate, a startup company’s product or service must have launched no earlier than 2017 and either be based in, or operate in, the UAE. The startup needs to have a minimum viable product and applicants must be 21 years of age or older. Startups must submit their entries in English through the Dubai Startup Hub website by the February 26 deadline.
His Excellency Hisham Al Shirawi, 2nd Vice Chairman of Dubai Chamber, said in a statement that the annual competition has been one of Dubai Startup Hub’s most successful initiatives to date, which has supported Dubai Chamber’s comprehensive entrepreneurship strategy of empowering entrepreneurs and providing them with the knowledge and tools they need to thrive and grow.
More than 1,600 smart business ideas have been submitted over the last four cycles of the competition with an increasing number of international submissions, he said, reflecting Dubai’s status as a magnet from promising startups.
- E. Al Shirawi added: “Startups are a key source of innovation in Dubai as they bring cutting-edge solutions to the market. By aligning this year’s competition with Expo 2020 Dubai, we are creating more opportunities and benefits for participating startups and positioning Dubai as innovation leader.”
This year’s edition of the competition was launched on Sunday at a ceremony attended by Dubai Chamber officials, previous competition winners and contestants, members of the local startup community, and representatives from Expo 2020 Dubai and DP World.
Following the submission deadline, entries will be evaluated and shortlisted with the selected candidates then qualifying for the training phase of the competition. The top 50 startups will also get to participate in a four-day bootcamp, and the top 10 startups will have the opportunity to exhibit at Expo 2020 Dubai to meet with potential investors and business partners. Winners will be announced at an awards ceremony in April 2020.
Last year’s winners included Denarii Cash, a mobile application helping overseas workers to send money claimed the first place prize, Arabee, a high specification platform providing an online multi-format Arabic language programme, and Xpence, a digital-only intelligent business bank account designed by entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs.
Dubai Chamber launched Dubai Startup Hub in 2016 as an online platform to connect startups, entrepreneurs, developers, venture capitalists and students, enabling them to learn about new opportunities and create new partnerships that stimulate economic growth.
souece: entrepreneur
