HE Badr Jafar

“Thirty years ago, the UAE was already ambitious, but the scale of what it would become was far from inevitable. When Gulf Business first appeared, launching a publication dedicated to the region’s emerging business community was itself an entrepreneurial act: a bet on the companies, investors and ideas that would shape an economy still undergoing extraordinary transformation.

That same entrepreneurial instinct has defined the UAE. Today, more than three quarters of our economy is non-oil. It ranks among the world’s most competitive economies, first globally for economic performance, among the leaders in human development, and at its highest-ever position in the Global Innovation Index. Those rankings tell the story of an economy that has become more sophisticated, not simply larger. This is now a country that operates a four-reactor nuclear energy programme, has reached Mars, commands globally significant pools of sovereign capital, hosts major international financial centres and is building gigawatt-scale artificial-intelligence infrastructure. It is simultaneously investing in advanced manufacturing, clean energy, biotechnology, logistics and the technologies that will shape the next industrial era. I have described the UAE as essentially the most ambitious startup the world has ever seen. Throughout its development, it has embraced entrepreneurs, welcomed talent and ideas from around the world, invested ahead of demand and treated innovation not as a sector, but as a national mindset. That instinct will matter even more in the decades ahead, as AI and other frontier technologies reshape industries, supply chains are redesigned for resilience, and the global economy becomes increasingly multipolar. The UAE is already positioned at the heart of many of these shifts, with the capital, infrastructure, connectivity, policy agility and global talent needed not merely to adapt to change, but to help shape it. Over the past three decades, the UAE has become a crossroads for the world. Its next chapter will establish it as one of the world’s leading proving grounds for the future. That means originating more technologies and globally competitive businesses here; turning research into intellectual property, capital into productive enterprise, and investments in energy, compute and infrastructure into new industries and capabilities. It means applying AI not simply because we can, but to make healthcare, education, logistics, energy, water and government more productive and accessible. And it means developing and attracting the talent capable of leading increasingly sophisticated industries and contributing to the country’s progress. Above all, it means remaining open. In a more fragmented world, countries capable of connecting different markets, cultures, technologies and sources of capital will become more valuable, not less.”