UAE has a big role to play in 4IR

The Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) will shape the world’s future. It has already dawned on us. The UAE is joining the World Economic Forum (WEF) to lead from the front as it ushers in the 4IR and gives fillip to technological advancements. While setting up the world’s first permanent policy council that will study and implement the plans of 4IR, the UAE will also buoy the industrial sector through a knowledge-based economy that will spawn sustainable development. The 4IR council will have 5,000 members from the government, academia and the public and private sectors. As the council is tasked to ensure that the right 4IR policies are made and implemented worldwide, its responsibility to change the global business landscape would be huge.
The technological thrust to industries poses challenges in implementation. A good plan needs to be properly understood. The council will have to hold regular meetings with different governments and policy makers to tell them how technologies like Blockchain, Artificial Intelligence, 3D Printing and so on can be implemented and the bottlenecks removed.
Establishing more sub councils in various countries and formulating a global governance framework for implementing the 4IR technologies is paramount. The councils should be able to work in tandem and exchange their expertise and experiences. They must help each other in studying the follow-up on
various plans and developing markets for the technological knowhow, products and solutions.
Even as the UAE announced the establishment of the world’s first 4IR council, it also spelt out its intention to boost industrial investments by over $70 billion by 2025. The aim is to enhance the share of the industrial sector in the country’s GDP to 25 percent. While targeting to increase industrial investments, it is
imperative that clean technologies are given a priority. The 4IR’s focus should be a green economic ecosystem. Promoting a technological progress fuelled by innovative and sustainable methods should pave the path for the future. The industrial strategies will evolve into engines of growth when environmental sustainability is at their core.
The success of 4IR will depend on technological investments that use the human resources in such a way that it brings about a synergy in different sectors. If one sector lags behind and the other flourishes, it won’t be a holistic and inclusive development. Such all-round development will depend on innovation and creativity. The UAE has already launched 12 initiatives and 39 projects to facilitate shift to a knowledge-based economy and to promote innovation. Education sector will play a crucial part in the industrial progress of the country. The youth have to be educated in a way that they can think out-of-the-box and become a workforce to reckon with. Innovation has to come naturally to them. And education should help them come up with new pragmatic plans to shore up the economy.
As the youth are groomed for the future world, it is equally important that today’s business fraternity takes a long-term view on matters that involve the economy. They should be willing to embrace the technological changes so that the UAE becomes the global platform for 4IR.