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A MONTHLY MAGAZINE ON KNOWLEDGE AND DEVELOPMENT BY THE MOHAMMED BIN RASHID AL MAKTOUM KNOWLEDGE FOUNDATION
JULY 2019 . ISSUE 55
DUBAI:
A City That Gets Smarter Day by Day
MEET YOSHUA BENGIO
The human face of AI
PROMOTING TOLERANCE BY COMBATING HATE SPEECH
Through social media platforms
SOUTH AFRICA
Trade and knowledge gateway to a continent with big potential

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PATHS
H.H. SHEIKH AHMED BIN MOHAMMED BIN RASHID AL MAKTOUM, CHAIRMAN OF THE MBRF
Race for Number One in Technology
The UAE spares no effort to do what it takes to upgrade the country’s technological infrastructure to advance toward the future. Looking around, we find features of technology everywhere: in research centers, scientific institutions, universities, schools, streets, shopping centers, and airports. We see tech- nology in action in all these places and it is benefiting all strata of society: academics, students, ordinary residents, and visitors.
The UAE’s mantra is that technology needs to be accessible to all and not kept only in specialized scientific laboratories or research centers. Everyone must enjoy its fruits in all aspects of their life, and everyone should speak about it. Technology is hori- zontal and strategic, not vertical, not reserved for urgent or emergency use.
The wise leadership believes that technology needs to be purposely woven into the workings of government. It is important to keep up with the latest developments and not let them overcome you, to never retreat from technological progress, living as we do in an ultra-competitive world that rewards moonshots in science and technology.
The strategy is all-encompassing, the vision
4 FLASHES / JULY 2019

WE NEED TO ESTABLISH A NEW PHASE OF GOVERNMENT WORK BASED ON ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE TO EXPAND THE POTENTIAL OF INDIVIDUALS AND ENHANCE THEIR ABILITIES TO DRIVE DEVELOPMENT.
H.H. SHEIKH MOHAMMED BIN RASHID AL MAKTOUM, PAYING TRIBUTE TO THE FIRST PHASE OF THE COUNTRY’S AI PROGRAM.
comprehensive. Everyone needs to appreciate and feel the importance of technology by integrating it in their daily lives. It is of interest to each and all, starting with government leaders who are work- ing assiduously to put in place infrastructure that absorbs technology, who are making these crucial investments, taking advantage of global expertise while training locals to deploy it. Technology is there to make life easier and more comfortable.
The seamless functioning of the country’s insti- tutions and service departments are testament to how successful the UAE has been in implement- ing its strategy. Ideas that were once the realm of science fiction have become daily reality. Now, the time has come for a new package of ideas that responds to the Fourth Industrial Revolution and all that this offers in the fields of biotechnol- ogy, nanotechnology, digitization, and artificial intelligence.
Such concepts are no longer alien to UAE, nor are they in our distant future, nor are they reserved for other cultures, they are for Arabs too. Today, this has become a truism. One lesson learned from the UAE’s success is that there is no place for the impossible, that words like backwardness and retreat cannot be part of our vocabulary. Through
singularity of vision, the wise leadership has helped us to rise to the occasion. All along, the leadership has kept faith in the human potential of this place. Having confidence in our own abilities and our willingness to take initiative are the two most val- uable personality traits that we have.
While the UAE has achieved a lot and scores highly in many human and cultural development indexes, we cannot rest on our laurels. As H.H. Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai said about the FutureBrand Coun- try Index 2019, which measures the attractiveness of countries: “The UAE is ranked first in the Arab world and 16th in the world. We will stay in the race to improve the attractiveness of our country in all fields.” His Highness takes pride in the achieve- ments of the UAE, our dear homeland. From this perspective, H.H. sees our beloved country as the best and it is. But this pride must not distract us from our endeavors to continue the progress, to shoot for the top.
To get there, we need firstly to believe that we can do it and secondly to be ready for more work. Only then will we win the race of technology and claim the number one spot.
www.mbrf.ae JULY 2019 / FLASHES 5

CEO AND EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
HE Jamal bin Huwaireb
EDITORIAL BOARD
Saif Al Mansoori Khalid Wazani Hussein Darwish Ahmed Shawqi Eyad Al Jurdy
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T: +971 4 433 85885 [email protected]
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Mohammed Al Jayed [email protected]
DESIGN DIRECTOR
Ayman Ramses
Mohammed Bin Rashid
Al Maktoum Knowledge Foundation
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JULY / 2019 ISSUE 55
COVER
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A MONTHLY MAGAZINE ON KNOWLEDGE AND DEVELOPMENT BY THE MOHAMMED BIN RASHID AL MAKTOUM KNOWLEDGE FOUNDATION
JULY 2019 . ISSUE 55
DUBAI:
A City That Gets Smarter Day by Day
MEET YOSHUA BENGIO
the human face of AI
PROMOTING TOLERANCE BY COMBATING HATE SPEECH
through social media platforms
SOUTH AFRICA
trade and knowledge gateway to a continent with big potential
KNOWLEDGE AWARD’S BOARD OF TRUSTEES AND ADVISORY COMMITTEE HOLD INAUGURAL MEETING
HOW TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIAL MEDIA CAN BE USED TO PROMOTE TOLERANCE
SOUTH AFRICA: TRADE AND KNOWLEDGE GATEWAY TO A CONTINENT WITH BIG POTENTIAL
6
FLASHES / JULY 2019

WE WELCOME YOUR VIEWS ON
[email protected]
CONTENTS
22
40
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND THE PROSPECTS
OF KNOWLEDGE
26
44 47
DUBAI: A CITY THAT GETS SMARTER DAY BY DAY
BRAZIL’S JOURNEY
FROM IMPORTER
TO MAJOR FOOD EXPORTER
COMBINING COMMUNITY
AND TECHNOLOGY TO FIGHT CRIME
BOOK IN MINUTES
www.mbrf.ae
JULY 2019 / FLASHES 7

NEWS
Knowledge Award’s Board of Trustees and Advisory Committee Hold First Meeting of 2019
Above:
MARKA’s Board of Trustees and Advisory Committee.
Right:
MBRKA’s Advisory Committee Dr. Hany Torky Dr. Sultan Al Nuaimi Kazuhiko Takeuchi.
The Board of Trustees and Advisory Committee sixth edition passed. The process of considering and for the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum evaluating the entries received through MBRKA’s
KnowledgeAward(MBRKA)helditsfirstmeetingof 2019 after the submission deadline for the Award’s
official website has thus begun.
The meeting was chaired by His Excellency Jamal bin Huwaireb, Vice Chairman of the Board of Trustees and Secretary General of MBRKA, while attendees included members of both the Board of Trustees and the Advisory Committee, namely: Dr Ali Ahmed Al-Ghafli, representing UAE University; Professor Mohamed Osman
8 FLASHES / JULY 2019

Alkhosht, representing Cairo University; Professor Nicholas Rawlins, representing the University of Oxford; Professor Alexander Zander, representing Nanyang Technological University, Singapore; Dr Sultan Mohammed Al Nuaimi, of Abu Dhabi University; Professor Kazuhiko Takeuchi, Director and Professor of Integrated Sustainability Research Systems at the Institute of Advanced Studies, University of Tokyo; David Bennett, representing the United States’ tertiary education sector; and Dr Hany Torky and Dr Wes Harry from the Advisory Committee.
At the meeting, all applications for the Award were reviewed, with attendees verifying which ones meet all of the Award’s requirements and conditions. The discussion then moved to MBRKA’s accomplishments over the past five years, and how its impact on innovators may be enhanced and the breadth of participation from around the world expanded.
“The Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Knowledge Award has left a strong impression locally, regionally, and internationally,” said H.E. Jamal bin Huwaireb, noting that phase one of the Award’s sixth edition witnessed fierce competition among candidates—be they individuals, academic entities, and institutions involved in the knowledge community.
“In its six short years of existence, the Award has succeeded in gaining international attention and accolades for shedding light on significant achievements and invaluable contributions that have truly and deeply improved human life,” H.E. bin Huwaireb said. He expressed gratitude to both the Trustees and the Advisory Committee for their efforts in elevating the Award to the prestigious status it has come to occupy internationally.
For his part, Professor Nicholas Rawlins noted
Left:
Jamal bin Huwaireb, Vice Chairman of the Board of Trustees and Secretary General of MBRKA.
NEWS
that they had discussed the shortlisting of potential Award winners who have met the competition’s terms and conditions and have made significant contributions that positively transformed their communities and the world.
Dr Ali Ahmed Al-Ghafli said that the meeting explored the Award’s impact over the years and focused on the need to build on its accomplishments, especially on its growing international acclaim and appeal among entities active in the knowledge sectors. Dr Al-Ghafli affirmed that the Award would consolidate its positive image across the global knowledge community in the near future.
The Award seeks to promote comprehensive development by supporting innovation and creativity in all spheres of knowledge. It comes with a monetary value is US$1 million. The winners will be presented with the Award at the annual Knowledge Summit organized by the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Knowledge Foundation in Dubai. The Summit provides a global platform for knowledge leaders, experts, and decision makers where they will explore ways to build and develop knowledge-based societies.
Left:
MARKA’s Board of Trustees Professor Alexander J.B. Zehnder
Dr. Ali Ahmed Alghafli Professor Nicholas Rawlins Dr. Mohamed Osman Alkhosht.
www.mbrf.ae
JULY 2019 / FLASHES 9

NEWS
MBRF and Al Ahram Conclude Journalistic Writing Skills Course
Above: H.E. Jamal Bin Huwairb honors a participant.
Below: Participants in a group photo.
A journalistic writing skills course was con- cluded last month in Cairo, the fruit of a strategic partnership agreement between the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Knowledge Foundation
(MBRF) and the Al Ahram Organization, pub- lisher of the eponymous daily newspaper in Egypt. The partnership falls within the framework of the Dubai International Program for Writing,
The course was held over two con- secutive months with participation from 23 Egyptian journalists and was supervised by the Al Ahram Regional Institute for Journalism.
The closing ceremony was attended by His Excellency Jamal Bin Huwairb, CEO of MBRF, Abdel Mohsen Salama, Chairman of Al Ahram Organization, and Sameh Abdullah, Director of the Al Ahram Regional Institute for Journalism.
At the ceremony, participating journalists received certificates from Abdel Mohsen Salama. H.E. Jamal
10 FLASHES / JULY 2019

Bin Huwairb presented cer- tificates of appreciation to the senior writers of Al Ahram who trained the journalists and to course coordinators.
His Excellency stressed that the Dubai International Program for Writing, with its reach across Arab coun- tries, in helping to foster cultural mobility and fruitful knowledge, will spawn distin- guished future generations of Arab creators in various fields of literary arts. At the end of the ceremony, he announced that the course participants with the highest ratings will be rewarded by being hosted in Dubai this November to cover the World Knowledge Summit as recognition and encouragement.
This initiative aligns per- fectly with MBRF’s mission of supporting young Arab talent all over the world in journal- istic writing, in cooperation with the Al-Ahram Organiza- tion as part of its wider goal of providing opportunities to youth in industry and knowl- edge dissemination.
The two sides discussed preparations for the second edition of the upcoming ‘skills of investigative reporting’ course. A group of Egyptian journalists, funded by the MBRF, will receive train- ing in modern investigative journalism methods—again under the supervision and coordination of Al-Ahram Organization and as part of the Dubai International Pro- gram for Writing.
www.mbrf.ae
MBRF Organizes Training Workshop in Amman for Youth
Participants in the training workshop in Amman.
In conjunction with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Knowledge Foundation (MBRF) organized a training workshop in Amman during the last month for 40 young men and women on data use and job skills of the future. The workshop builds on the momentum generated by Knowledge Week hosted by MBRF in March in collaboration with UNDP and Jordan’s Ministry of Youth. The purpose of the Knowledge Week was to inspire Jordanian youth to come up with a detailed action plan to address the challenges of build- ing a knowledge-based society. The workshop participants were selected based on prior involvement in the Knowledge Index Workshop held under the patronage of Jordanian Prime Minister Dr. Omar AlRazzaz,whichtookplaceduringKnowledgeWeek. Thethree-dayworkshopfeaturedsessionson developing skills related to the media and social media. Participants in addition performed analyti- cal and logical reasoning to generate practical recommendations to help decision-makers reinforce efforts to build a strong knowledge-based society. They also completed a practical training test. At the end of the workshop, 15 participants were selected to join Knowledge Camps, a project launched by the Ministry of Youth running for two months starting mid-June. Selected participants will help to train hundreds of attendees aged 14 to 17 years by sharing with them the knowledge and skills they acquired at the workshop. Jordan’s Minister of Youth, H.E. Dr. Mohammed Abu Rumman, attended the workshop and heard participants talk about Knowledge Week, what they learned at the workshop, and future follow-up activities including the Knowledge Camps. “Knowledge Week, organized by the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Knowledge Foundation and the United Nations Development Programme in Jordan earlier this year, seeks to create an important knowl- edge movement at the regional level,” said H.E. Jamal bin Huwaireb, CEO of the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Knowledge Foundation. “It aims to contribute to finding solutions to the chal- lenges we face in building knowledge-based societies and developing youth skills in line with future requirements and sustainable development of the region. MBRF and the UNDP will continue to step up their efforts to enrich this movement in several Arab countries, doing so in a manner that creates measurable positive impact on the knowledge capacities of young people across all impor- tant fields,” he added. “The workshop was organized under the umbrella of the UNDP and MBRF’s Knowledge Project and aligns with our continuous efforts to raise awareness of the importance of knowledge and knowledge-based policies for sustainable development,” said Dr. Hany Torky, Chief Technical Advisor, Arab Knowledge Project, UNDP.
The Knowledge Camps are a new initiative of Jordan’s Ministry of Youth that aim to build on the success of Knowledge Week. The initiative aims to train young people on the future skills needed for the labor market, such as critical thinking, problem-solving, and data handling. The camps seek to train some 700 young men and women from various governorates across Jordan.
NEWS
JULY 2019 / FLASHES 11

NEWS
MBRF Discusses the Prospects of Cooperation with the National Council for Childhood and Motherhood
A delegation from the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Knowledge Foundation (MBRF) has visited the National Council for Childhood and Motherhood (NCCM) in Egypt, to discuss ways of cooperation in the project of “Literacy Challenge” which launched by His Highness Sheikh Moham- med bin Rashid Al Maktoum, UAE Vice President and Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai, in order to providing education opportunities for 30 million Arab youth by 2030.
The delegation was headed by HE Jamal Bin Huwairb, CEO of MBRF, who discussed with Dr. Azza El Ashmawy, Secretary General of the NCCM, the prospects for joint cooperation and ways of exchanging ideas and visions on the mechanisms of the “Literacy Challenge” project.
During the meeting, El Ashmawy briefed Jamal Bin Huwairib on some of the projects launched by the NCCM, such as the Pioneer Mothers Initiative, which was implemented in Fayoum governorate. It aims at empowering the families educationally, cul- turally, socially and economically in coordination with all government agencies supporting the rights of children and mothers. He praised the importance of this initiative, and called for the need to circulate to some governorates of Upper Egypt in cooperation with the MBRF.
“His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum’s initiatives are based on humanitarian aspects that aim at empowering people everywhere and helping them to make the best use of their abili- ties and qualifications. This work is part of the UAE’s strategy of building bridges of cooperation and building excellent relations with various countries in the world.” Jamal Bin Huwairb said about this visit. He added: “The aim of MBRF is to partner with the NCCM and various government agencies in Egypt for unifying efforts to eradicate illiteracy. MBRF will also participate in the dissemination of the Pioneer Mothers Initiative launched by the NCCM in Fayoum Governorate, In Upper Egypt, and gradually move to the rest of the governorates, which is witnessing a marked increase in the rate of illiteracy.”
The “Literacy Challenge” project seeks to compensate for the loss of formal education opportunities, and will serve as a tool to narrow the gender gap in education and achieve educa- tion for all.
The NCCM is implementing a number of aware- ness campaigns, including awareness-raising seminars and panel discussions on issues such as the issue of dropout and the Pioneer Mothers Ini- tiative, which include literacy, moral support and health education.
12 FLASHES / JULY 2019

MBRF Launches Children’s Literature Workshop in Morocco
The first training session of a children’s literature workshop in Morocco has concluded. The workshop is an initiative of the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Knowledge Foundation (MBRF). The workshop builds on the success of the Dubai International Program for Writing, a program that fosters Arab innovators and takes place in several countries including Egypt, Kuwait, and Tunisia. The children’s literature workshop will last for five months, with 10 trainees participating.
The first session, supervised by Dr. Wafaa Thabet Al- Mazghani, examined the different styles of writing for children, especially works written with early childhood and preschool readers in mind. Participants learned about the most important narrative techniques used in story writing and were given reading materials to pre- pare them for the second session.
According to His Excellency Jamal Bin Huwairb, CEO of MBRF: “The Dubai International Program for Writing has successfully reached talented and creative writers in diverse fields of knowledge and literature across multi- ple Arab countries. MBRF provides them with a solid foundation and a nurturing environment where they can refine their talents and literary productions and present them to the world. This in turn will develop the Arab canon of literature and promote the intellectual output of the children of the region.”
His Excellency added that the program would con- tinue expanding into new countries and regions in the coming years with the goal of placing Arabic literary works at the vanguard of the world’s most esteemed literature. “The workshop in Morocco is an important
milestone for the Program, highlighting as it does the importance of developing children’s literature. We believe this effort will reap rewards for the Arab world in future generations.”
The second session will take place on July 11. Participants will be presented with examples of inter- nationally-acclaimed stories and will study different experiences of Arab and foreign writers. In addition, they will share ideas on how to address creative chal- lenges faced by storytellers operating in the early childhood and pre-school space and will discuss the importance of accompanying graphics for books. The session will give participants a clear understanding of how to produce creative works individually, bilater- ally and collectively. The third session, which begins in August, will focus on narrative techniques in writ- ing that targets middle to late childhood readers. The session will impart to participants practical and sci- entific tools to analyze and critique children’s stories using objective criteria. In the fourth session, being held in September, participants will analyze middle to late childhood works for form and content and develop a theoretical outline of each story. By the end of session, the participants should be equipped to adopt new ideas and fresh perspectives on topics that align with their own personality and interests.
At the fifth and final session in October, participants will present initial outlines of their own stories. Partici- pants will discuss among themselves their feasibility, the main characters, the themes, forms and styles, and how to choose the best tools for producing their content.
NEWS
www.mbrf.ae
JULY 2019 / FLASHES 13

14 FLASHES / JULY 2019

How
Technology
and Social
Media Can
Be Used to
Promote
Tolerance
By Sadab Kitatta Kaaya
The emergence of social media has unfortunately also ushered in a new phenomenon—online hate speech. Governments and organisations around the world are fighting to address this. Without such efforts, hate speech left unchecked can lead to violence.
www.mbrf.ae
JULY 2019 / FLASHES 15

In 2008 Elon University in North Carolina, USA, conducted a prediction survey that asked whether people would be more tolerant in 2020 given their wider exposure to other viewpoints expressed through the internet and other information and com- munication technologies.
Of the 1,196 respondents, 55 percent disagreed with this prediction. The majority of respondents held the view that “while there is no doubt the inter- net is expanding the potential for people to come to a better understanding of one another it also expands the potential for bigotry, hate, and terrorism, thus tol- erance will not see net gains.”
To deal with the threat, the United Nations Edu- cational, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) advocates an ‘education for tolerance’ approach that seeks to counter influences that lead to fear and exclusion of others. Such an approach should help young people develop capacities for forming
independent judgement, critical thinking, and ethi- cal reasoning.
The Declaration of Principles on Tolerance, signed in November 1995 by UNESCO member states, affirms that tolerance is neither indulgence nor indifference. It is respect and appreciation of the rich variety of our world’s cultures, our forms of expres- sion, and ways of being human.
In an interview for Flashes, Dr. James Witte, a Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at George Mason University, a pub- lic research university in Virginia, USA, opined that society ought not to accept acts or words that pro- mote violence.
Dr. Witte, who is also Director of the Center for Social Science Research and Director of the Institute for Immigration Research, said: “I believe tolerance is not absolute, but nearly so. A humane society should not accept words or actions committing, promoting, or glorifying violence toward others. Revealing and recognizing such violence is acceptable if the aim is to put a halt to such violence. Apart from violence any expressions of beliefs, attitudes, and opinions ought to be tolerated so long as they respect the essential humanity of others who do not hold the same beliefs, attitudes, and opinions.”
Bringing people together, Dr Witte argued, was essential to promoting tolerance since it is through exposure and contact with others that shared human- ity becomes apparent.
“Technology and social media are an appropriate means to this end as it allows exposure and contact without physical co-presence. It is my view that this is best achieved through an interactive platform that allows for give-and-take communication analogous to face-to-face interaction,” he added.
Ugandan innovator Michael Katagaya, founder of Evidence and Methods Lab, a civic technology initia- tive, agreed with this view.
“Social media exposes people to other world views so that they don’t have to judge others based on race, culture, religion, or other biases, and learn to co-exist with people,” Katagaya said.
Katagaya was a participant in the panel discussion, “The perspectives for digital democracy in Uganda and beyond,” at the Uganda Social Media Conference 2019 in Kampala on June 25. He argued that organi- sations and governments needed to think about using social media to educate people on why they must tol- erate and co-exist with one another.
He cited as an example Rwanda’s online campaign spearheaded by the nongovernmental organisation Never Again using the hashtag #NeverAgain, which drew on the experiences of the 1994 genocide to teach young Rwandans about the dangers of being
A humane society should
not accept words or actions committing, promoting, or glorifying violence toward others. Revealing and recognizing such violence is acceptable if the aim is to put a halt to such violence.”
James Witte
16 FLASHES / JULY 2019

QUOTES ON TOLERANCE
Without tolerance, our world turns into hell.
Friedrich Durrenmatt, Swiss author.
What is tolerance? It is the consequence of humanity. We are all formed of frailty and error; let us pardon reciprocally each other’s folly - that is the first law of nature.
Voltaire, French writer.
We - what we need is a dialogue among civilizations. And we need multiculturalism, respect for diversity, tolerance, respect for diverse faiths.
Manmohan Singh, Indian economist.
We live in a diverse society - in fact, a diverse world - and we must learn to live in peace and with respect for each other.
Stan Lee, American writer.
Real tolerance means respecting other people even when they baffle you and you have no idea why they think what they think.
G. Willow Wilson, American writer.
intolerant.
“Our organization, Evidence and Meth-
ods Lab, is using several approaches. For instance, focusing on land rights and family law, we use infographics to present messages in formats that people can easily under- stand,” Katagaya said.
Gilbert Mwambu of Kampala-based Com- puter Forensics Consult is working with Legal Aid Service Providers Network, a civil society organisation, to pilot an interactive App that he thinks can promote tolerance through increased interaction of citizens and government service providers.
“Through www.twogere.com, we are piloting a platform that enables face-to-face interaction between citizens and experts. We are creating a platform where anyone can access and consult any expert without neces- sarily having their contacts,” Mwambu said.
In an article published on the UNESCO website, Ugandan-South Sudanese jour- nalist Poni Alice JameKolok called for the regulation of social media, a view shared by Katagaya.
“Rules that govern interactions on social media can be made in such a way that pro- motes tolerance. If I abused somebody because of their race, religion, gender or orientation, I should be brought to book. Facebook is currently doing it that if you posted something that is considered offen- sive and you get reported to Facebook, action will be taken,” Katagaya said.
www.mbrf.ae
JULY 2019 / FLASHES 17

GLOBAL KNOWLEDGE INDEX 2018
COUNTRY PROFILE:
SOUTH AFRICA
GDP US$ 349.42 BN POPULATION 56,717,156 HDI 0.699 SECTORIAL INDICES
PRE-UNIVERSITY EDUCATION (PUE)
RANK 92 VALUE 48.6
TECHNICAL VOCATIONAL EDUCATION & TRAINING (TVET)
RANK 107 VALUE 43.3
HIGHER EDUCATION (HE)
RESEARCH, DEVELOPMENT
& INNOVATION (RDI)
RANK 52 VALUE 25.0
RANK VALUE
58 41.9
INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATIONS TECHNOLOGY (ICT)
RANK 70 VALUE 51.2
ECONOMY
RANK 67 VALUE 51.1
GENERAL ENABLING ENVIRONMENT (GEE)
SECTORIAL INDICES IN COMPARISON WITH WORLD AVERAGE
RANK 93 VALUE 56.1
World Average Sectorial Indices
PUE TVET HE RDI ICT ECONOMY GEE
48.6 43.3
54.5 50.9
26.0
40.2
41.9
27.5
46.4
51.6
51.2
45.1
56.1
62.3
18 FLASHES / JULY 2019

KNOWLEDGE INDEX
SOUTH AFRICA 45
48 WORLD AVERAGE
WORLD RANK 77/134
Lebanon Botswana Jordan South Africa Panama Iran
GENERAL ENABLING ENVIRONMENT
93 RANK 56.1 VALUE
POLITICAL AND INSTITUTIONAL 54 SOCIO-ECONOMIC 102
RANK 59.0 RANK 50.9 RANK 59.9
RANK 41.2 RANK 59.5
RANK 53.6 RANK 50.3
RANK 58.5 RANK 41.9
RANK 40.8 RANK 42.6
RANK 23.9 RANK 23.0 RANK 35.4
RANK 59.6 RANK 47.6
RANK 50.7 RANK 30.8 RANK 48.2
HEALTH AND ENVIRONMENT
KNOWLEDGE CAPITAL
EDUCATIONAL ENABLING ENVIRONMENT
TECHNICAL VOCATIONAL EDUCATION AND TRAINING
FORMATION AND PROFESSIONAL TRAINING FEATURES OF THE LABOUR MARKET
HIGHER EDUCATION
HIGHER EDUCATION INPUTS
HIGHER EDUCATION OUTPUTS AND QUALITY
RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT INNOVATION IN PRODUCTION SOCIAL INNOVATION
ICT INPUTS ICT OUTPUTS
KNOWLEDGE COMPETITIVENESS ECONOMIC OPENNESS FINANCING AND VALUE ADDED
121
93 82 43
67 34
58
83 47
51 80 48
81 68
72 91 43
74 75 76 77 78
79
VALUE VALUE VALUE
VALUE VALUE
VALUE
VALUE VALUE
VALUE
VALUE VALUE
VALUE VALUE VALUE
VALUE VALUE
VALUE VALUE VALUE
PRE-UNIVERSITY EDUCATION
92 RANK 48.6 VALUE
RESEARCH, DEVELOPMENT AND INNOVATION
52 RANK 26.0 VALUE
INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATIONS TECHNOLOGY
70 RANK 51.2 VALUE
ECONOMY
67 RANK 45.1 VALUE
www.mbrf.ae
JULY 2019 / FLASHES 19

EXPLORE
South Africa:
Trade and Knowledge Gateway to a Continent with Big Potential
Dr. Khaled Wassef Wazani
For more than two decades, South Africa has been a big player in the global economy. A significant trade power both regionally and globally, with a Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of $350 billion and a population of 58 million, it emerged on the global stage after it joined the so-called BRICS group, founded in India in 2006 by Brazil, Russia, India, and China. Collectively, the BRICS countries make up about a quarter of global GDP and nearly 45 percent of the world’s population.
The latest edition of the Global Knowledge Index, an annual publication of the Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum Knowledge Foundation (MBRF) produced in cooperation with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), shows that South Africa has made remarkable progress in all seven sectors covered by the Index.
South Africa came third place overall among African nations, jumping four places
on its 2017 performance, and surpassed
only by Seychelles and Mauritius. How-
globally for percentage of students enrolled in inter- nationally-recognized universities.
The Knowledge Index ranks 134 countries in seven knowledge-related sectors. In the ‘General Enabling Environment’ sector, South Africa came sixth globally in terms of female participation in Parliament and on the institutional aspects of empowerment, it came 38th.
AFRICA TRADE WEEK
ever, unlike South Africa which rose in the ranks, Seychelles dropped back two places.
Investment in education is a top prior- ity for the South African government, as evidenced by the country having come first place globally in the field of trained teach- ers in secondary schools. South Africa also came in first for students enrolled in tech- nical and vocational educational training (TVET) programs. It ranked 20th place
The three-day trade exhibition known as Africa Trade Week was held in Johannesburg, South Africa’s financial capital, in the last week of June. The event convened more than 10,000 participants from 53 countries to discuss the conference theme ‘Africa—the New Home of Trade.’ The United Arab Emirates was one of the most important par- ticipants, with a high-level delegation attending, and the country hosting the second largest pavilion among partici- pants. UAE investments in South Africa are set to increase to more than $14 billion, an increase of more than 40 per- cent on previous years.
20 FLASHES / JULY 2019

KNOWLEDGE INDEX
GLOBAL KNOWLEDGE INDEX 2018-SOUTH AFRICA
Research, Develop- ment and Innovation
Economy
General Enabling Environment
Higher Education
Information and Com- munications Technology
Technical and Vocational Edu- cation and Training
Pre-University Education
On the Research, Development and Innovation sector, South Africa placed 52nd; on Education 58th; on Economy 67th; on Information and Communi- cations Technology (ICT) 70th; on Pre-University Education 92nd; and on Technical and Vocational Education and Training 107th.
In the Pre-University Education sector, South Africa placed 11th globally for government spend- ing on basic education. However, for ‘knowledge capital’ it only came 93rd and 92nd for Educational Enabling Environment. Clearly, the country faces some challenges in the field of education, especially in the areas of schooling environment, educational outcomes, and completion levels.
In the TVET sector, where South Africa came 107th, the main challenges lie with the technical education structure and the qualifications of its workforce. In Higher Education, it scored relatively well, placing 58th globally, including 31st for glob- ally ranked-universities, 34th for Competency of Students, and 47th for output.
Both the Higher Education and the Research, Development and Innovation sectors speak to South Africa’s potential to develop sustainably by focusing on knowledge development. In both sectors, South Africa made significant progress compared with the previous year.
For Social Innovation, South Africa also ranked relatively well, 48th globally. For Business Density, it came in 12th and for Printing and Publishing 8th, a commendable achievement considering the importance in disseminating knowledge worldwide.
In the ICT sector, South Africa scored averagely well, in 70th place. Drilling down into the sector, South Africa scored highly in some subcatego- ries, such as mobile-cellular subscriptions where it ranked 8th, and government and institutional usage of ICT where it ranked 30th. For patents in the ICT field, it was ranked 48th.
Under the Economy category, where it ranked 67th globally, the big challenge
lies with Openness, particularly its percentage of foreign trade and levels of foreign investment. These metrics have a direct impact on its rank- ing in the Economy sector. Clearly, the country is vigorously seeking to enhance its competitiveness by immersing itself more deeply in global trading markets. Evidence of this is seen through its mem- bership of important and effective economical blocs today such as the BRICS, and its recent hosting of Africa Trade Week.
Looking to the future, if South Africa wishes to accelerate its development and further improve its score in the Index, it will need to double down on efforts on the sectors of Education, Research, Development and Innovation. It will also need to develop its ICT sector, which in turn will help it to improve its performance in the other five sectors.
If South Africa can make progress on the various indicators covered by the Knowledge Index, it will definitely become one of the most advanced coun- tries in the global economy.
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MBRF Produces and Disseminates Knowledge Worldwide
Artificial Intelligence
and the Prospects of
Knowledge
Thanks to the direction of His Highness Sheikh Ahmed Bin Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Chairman of the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Knowledge Foundation (MBRF),
the Foundation has built a reputation for excellence. This has strengthened Dubai’s position as a leading regional and global destination for the transfer, dissemination, and production of knowledge in line with the UAE’s vision of building knowledge societies.
KNOWLEDGE
At MBRF’s annual Knowledge Summit in December, top-tier panelists discuss latest devel- opments in the fields of science and knowledge. Through its international partnerships, MBRF launched important knowledge initiatives and programs to bolster the status of the Arabic lan- guage such as Arab Innovation, Arab Professionals Forum, Ladies Lounge, My Family is Reading, and
Nobel Museum.
The Foundation’s mission is not only to spread
knowledge in the UAE, but also to transfer it to all Arabs. It has established partnerships to support Arab innovators and creators wherever they are. It has launched its own Knowledge Award to honor the achievements of innovators from all over the world and has developed the Global Knowledge Index.
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The MBRF also plays an important role in knowledge dissemination through its books, pub- lications, and partnerships with publishers. The Knowledge reports, produced in collaboration with the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), are among the Foundation’s most impor- tant publications. The following is from one of those reports, first published in 2018, entitled ‘The Future of Knowledge: A Foresight.’
Future Technologies
When we talk about the future of societies, technological change cannot be considered in isolation. Other forces—or trends—such as glo- balization, sustainability, demographic shifts and urbanization, will also affect the future state of the economy and the future of work. Therefore, if we want to understand how the future will be shaped, we need to acknowledge the interactions embedded in these trends as they often reinforce each other.
We believe that certain types of technologies can help overcome most of the challenges associated with these trends, such as the ageing population,
The MBRF’s mission is not only to spread knowledge in the UAE, but also to transfer it to all Arabs.
increasing scarcity of resources (including food shortage in developing economies) and growing inequalities. The European Commission calls these technologies ‘key enabling technologies’ and they are also commonly referred to as ‘exponential technologies.’ In this report, we refer to them as ‘key technologies for the future.’
All key technologies for the future present two principal common features. First, they form together an ecosystem in which each technology both exploits and fosters the development of the others. In other words, the novel technologies that are being grafted onto existing and more mature technologies amplify the performance of the latter, and vice versa. Second, they enable the exponential acceleration of innovation, as each technological improvement leads to innovation, which in turn functions as a platform for further technological improvement and innovation. These technologies therefore help developing multiple novel applica- tions in a wide range of sectors and industries.
As highlighted in the ‘Technology Profiles’, AI, cybersecurity, blockchain and biotechnol- ogy possess these two features. In addition, they are all still at an early stage of development as evidenced by their position in the latest Gartner Hype Cycle. For each of them, many avenues for future research, experimentation, and innovation remain, which could lead to unexpected results.
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We therefore believe that these four technologies are good options to bet on and invest in for the future, as together they could be used to build solutions to the world’s most pressing environmen- tal, economic, and social challenges with greater speed and accuracy, thereby helping to realize the 17 Sustainable Development Goals.
Artificial Intelligence
Artificial Intelligence (AI) refers to the
“ability of a computer or a computer-ena-
bled robotic system to process information
and produce outcomes in a manner similar
to the thought process of humans in learn-
ing, decision making, and solving problems.” By extension, the objective of AI systems is to develop systems capable of tackling complex problems in ways similar to human logic and reasoning.
Progress in AI is accelerating thanks to advances made in key other technologies. Since its initial conception in the 1940s, AI has reached a histori- cal moment because of six converging factors, four of which are technological:
Big Data: Today, the availability of greater vol- umes and sources of data (both structured and unstructured( is enabling capabilities in AI that were not possible in the past due to lack of data availability and limited sample sizes.
Cloud Computing: Breakthroughs in cloud com- puting technologies have made it cheaper and faster to handle large volumes of data with complex AI- empowered systems through parallel processing.
Social Media Platforms: Advances in several aspects of AI such as deep learning and reinforce- ment have been facilitated by the existence of open source communities who are developing and shar- ing AI tools and applications.
Open Source Software and Data: Similarly, open source software and data are also accelerating the uptake of AI as they allow spending less time on routine coding and industry standardization.
New Era
Recent advances in AI presage a new age for many other technologies. For example, AI could improve cloud technology just as cloud technology has improved AI development. Their combination has the potential to change the way the data are
stored and processed across various geographies. AI has also taken root in biotechnology, where for instance, machine learning shows great promise to make drug discovery cheaper and quicker.
Today, AI is already used to forecast crop yields from space, automate microscopes to diagnose malaria, and make customer support multilingual. These are only a few examples of how different sec- tors can benefit from the technology. More than 60 percent of consumers and business decision mak- ers believe that AI can help provide solutions to the most important issues facing modern society ranging from clean energy to cancer and disease.
By tailoring drugs and treatments, the technol- ogy could deliver savings of up to €8.45 trillion in the healthcare sector. In the energy sector, AI has the potential to cut 10 percent off national electric- ity usage by using deep learning to match energy generation and demand in real-time, increasing efficiency, use, and storage of available energy.
Machine learning could also yield 12 percent fuel savings for manufacturers, customers and air- lines by optimizing flight routes. AI techniques are also opening up various new approaches to protect and sustainably manage oceans. In order to pro- tect endangered marine species, new systems could use image analytics and machine learning to track the numbers and locations of invasive species. AI- powered robots could also be used to monitor ocean conditions by detecting pollution levels and tracking changes in temperature and pH of the oceans due to climate change.
KNOWLEDGE
The objective of AI systems is to develop systems capable of tackling complex problems in ways similar to human logic and reasoning.
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Dubai:
A City That Gets Smarter Day by Day
Compiled by Nazeem Beegum Rahuman
When His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al
Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE, and Ruler of Dubai, announced in 2013 his plan to make Dubai a model ‘Smart City’, nobody envisioned just how far it would
go. Today, Dubai rubs shoulders with countries that embrace artificial intelligence (AI) to provide ‘seamless, efficient, safe, and personalized’ services to its population.
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GOVERNANCE
Sheikh Mohammed’s vision was to transform Dubai into a Smart City by 2021 and to foster a gen- eration equipped to meet the challenges of the future with the help of science and technology. As of 2019, we have witnessed a true technological revolution in the emirate, with smart services operating across government departments and in a vibrant public transport system.
Visit any kiosk, you will be amazed at how smart Dubai has become, how you can deal with day-to- day affairs in a smarter way. For example, you can renew your car registration card in one minute by visiting a Roads and Transport Authority kiosk.
Sheikh Mohammed’s vision was for all govern- ment offices to be digitized by 2017 under six key pillars: transport, communications, infrastructure, electricity, economic services, and urban planning. The idea was to give people access to high-speed wireless internet connections, enabling them to receive government services through their smart devices.
Though the original goal was to link the depart- ments and entities of the government of Dubai to provide seamless services to the public, it evolved into be a project that would make Dubai “the happi- est city on the earth.”
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To meet the goal, in 2014 he announced 100 ini- tiatives covering the six key pillars and set a target of 1,000 government services to go smart within three years.
The Smart Dubai 2021 initiative is the emirate’s roadmap to becoming an ‘intelligent, responsive and personalized city of the future.’ The ultimate aim is to foster smart living, smart economy, smart govern- ance, smart mobility, smart environment, and smart people by 2021.
Features of the Dubai Smart City initiative
• Free Wi-Fi in public areas.
• Dubai Design District, a public platform
for companies to facilitate their transactions such as • My Window to Dubai program to share
process of transforming Dubai into a smart city. It also monitors the government projects and service indicators, roads, weather conditions, and emergency situations etc.
• Electric car charging stations that would boost the use of environmentally-friendly cars.
• The smart parking system to tell drivers about the availability and location of parking spaces. • Live traffic monitoring to help residents
plan their journey before leaving their homes.
• Smart meters and smart power grid to help customers monitor their power and water use in real
time, and unused solar energy.
• Open global laboratory to promote science
licenses, visas, and other government services.
• 5-D control room used to manage the
information on government entities, schools, hospi- tals, roads and transport, sensor systems, buildings, energy and others.
• I-Dubai program to provide information on municipal services.
• Smart parks and beaches project to provide information on weather conditions, sea, tempera- tures, and public safety guidelines.
Meanwhile, Smart Dubai signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Dubai Financial Services Authority (DFSA) to facilitate these smart transformation initiatives and empower residents to
among residents.
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GOVERNANCE
make use of the technology innovation.
The MoU complements ongoing DFSA initiatives by
driving organization-wide digital transformation and con- tributes to Smart Dubai’s startup support initiative for entrepreneurs.
At the MoU’s digital signing Wesam Lootah, Chief Exec- utive Officer of Smart Dubai Government Establishment, said: “The collaboration of public and private sector entities, specialized in all economic sectors, is central to achiev- ing the smart city vision outlined by His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai. The MoU with the DFSA will further accelerate the digital transfor- mation by covering areas related to data science within the financial services sector.”
Through the MoU, the DFSA will also promote the Dubai Paperless initiative to support Dubai government’s aim to become completely paperless by 2021.
Other projects & initiatives
Some projects that predated the Smart City initiative are also playing an important role in making Dubai a smart city. These include: the Radio Frequency Identification-ena- bled Salik, a road toll system introduced in 2007; Smart Nol Card, a unified payment card that can be used across the public transport network; RTA eWallet, an online payment system; and QR code to locate addresses.
HERE ARE SOME OF THE PROJECTS THAT STARTED AFTER THE ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE SMART DUBAI INITIATIVE:
• Makani, a smart address system under which buildings are assigned a unique 10-digit number that can be used to search the location through Google Maps.
• Environmentally-friendly electric bikes for patrolling announced by Dubai Police in 2014.
• Happiness meter.
• Dubai Data initiative, the most comprehensive city-wide data- base across the public and private sector.
• Smart Dubai Index, a set of indicators that highlight the achieve- ments of Dubai.
• Sustainable cities that con- serve energy and harness renewable energy.
• Dubai government apps that provide instant digital access to over 50 government services.
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DIGITAL MINIMALISM: CHOOSING A FOCUSED LIFE IN A NOISY WORLD
By Cal Newport
How many times do you check your smart- phone? If the number is higher than 47 times a day, then you’re officially an addict.
That’s the bad news. The good news is that you’re not alone. Andeven though this is a rela- tively new malaise, experts are already finding ways to help people reclaim their former lives.
One those experts is Cal Newport, an associ- ate professor of computer science at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, who argues in his new book, Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World, that our use of smartphones is disrupting our lives in a way that erodes individual autonomy.
Published by Portfolio Penguin, the book describes how we can improve the quality of our lives by becoming digital minimalists. This could be appealing to most peoplein this increasingly tech-centric world where so many of us struggle to lead a focused life.
Digital minimalism is a concept that advocates taking a step back and reflecting on which digital communication tools add the most value to your life. The idea here is that by clearing away insig- nificant digital clutter in a considered, purposeful way, you will improve the quality of your life.
The truth of the matter is that people tend to be more addicted to social media and smart- phones than they would care to admit. That’s why in this 304-page book, Newport tries to tackle the big question: how do we manage our personal lives in a tech-dominated world?
The book is divided into two parts: in part one, ‘Foundations’, the author gives the origins and evolution of the today’s smartphone addic- tion problem.
Newport writes that “one of the major selling points of the original iPhone was that it inte- grated your iPod with your cellphone, preventing you from having to carry around two separate
Left:
Cal Newport.
devices in your pockets.”
The technological innovation spearheaded
by Apple and other major tech companies has, by stealth, taken over many aspects of our daily lives, Newport argues.
“Our current unease with new technologies is not really about whether or not they’re useful. It’s instead about autonomy,” he writes, add- ing “we signed up for these services and bought these devices for minor reasons—to look up friends’ relationship statuses or eliminate the need to carry a separate iPod and phone—and then found ourselves, years later, increasingly dominated by their influence, allowing them to control more of how we spend our time, how we feel, and how we behave.”
The second part of the book offers ideas for designing a lifestyle framed around digital minimalism. Newport examines fundamen- tal issues such as how to improve the quality of our lives by supplanting some of the time
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we spend on devices and gadgets with spells of solitude and leisure.
The declutter process, as he dubs it, comes in three steps: First, decide which technologies you can do without. These may include anything you are able to stop using without this negatively impacting the daily functioning of your profes- sional or personal life. Acknowledging that many people must use these technologies for work, Newport suggests devising a concrete plan that spells out when and how to use digital devices.
For example, a social media manager at a firm who uses Facebook Messenger to engage with people who follow the company’s Facebook page could choose to use the app only when on a work computer and only during work hours—embrac- ing a mantra of ‘I will not use the app outside of work hours. I will not download the app on my cell phone or my home desktop.’
In taking such steps, the decision to end your obsession with your smartphone should be a conscious one. “Smartphones are the preferred Trojan horse of the digital attention economy,” says Newport, and so “declaring freedom from your smartphone is probably the most serious step you can take toward embracing the atten- tion resistance.”
Part two of the Newport plan recommends refraining from using any optional technolo- gies for 30 days. During this time, Newport says that “you must aggressively explore higher-qual- ity activities to fill the time left vacant by the optional technologies you’re avoiding.” Most of the testers who failed to observe this rule this felt bored and uneasy, he observes.
In the third and final part of the declutter
Digital minimalism is a concept that advocates taking a step back and reflecting on which digital communication tools add the most value to your life
process, you learn how to reintroduce some of those optional technologies into your life if they provide you something that you value profoundly.
While some suggestions made by New- port such as reading books, getting out with friends, and writing may seemcommon sense, they reaffirm the preeminent value of lei- sure activities over compulsively checking our smartphones.
This easy-to-read book is not intended to entirely remove the role that new technol- ogy has played in our lives but it may change how you relate to social media and your smartphone.
About the Author
Cal Newport is an associate professor of computer science at Georgetown University and the author of six books, including Deep Work and So Good They Can’t Ignore You. You won’t find him on Twitter, Facebook, or Ins- tagram, but you can often find him at home with his family in Washington, DC, or writ- ing essays for his popular website calnewport. com.
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THE CREATIVITY CODE:
ART AND INNOVATION IN THE AGE OF AI
By Marcus du Sautoy
Right:
Marcus du Sautoy
What will the future of creativity be? How will machine learning disrupt, enrich, and transform our understanding of what it means to be human?
Can a well-programmed machine do anything a human can—only better? Complex algorithms are choosing our music, suggesting our partners, and driving our investments. They can process more data than a doctor or lawyer and act with greater preci- sion. For many years we’ve taken solace in the notion that they can’t create. But now that algorithms can learn and adapt, does the future of creativity belong to machines too?
Marcus du Sautoy takes us to the forefront of crea- tive new technologies and offers a more positive and unexpected vision of our future cohabitation with machines.
In The Creativity Code he considers what machine learning means for the future of creativity: “At some level, all these expressions of creativity are the prod- ucts of neutral and chemical activity. Creativity is a code that evolution across millions of years has honed inside our brains. If we unpick the creative outpour- ings of the human species, we can start to see that there are rules underlying the creative process. So is our creativity in fact more algorithmic and rule-based
than we might want to acknowledge? Can we hope to crack the creativity code?”
He says that his book aims to explore the limits of the new Artificial Intelligence to see whether it can match or even surpass the marvels of our human code. Could a machine paint, compose music, or write
a novel? It may not be able to compete with Mozart, Shakespeare, or Picasso, but could it be as creative as a child when asked to write a story or paint a scene?
While most recent books on AI focus on the future of work, The Creativity Code moves us to the forefront of creative new technologies and offers a more positive and surprising vision of our future cohabitation with machines. It challenges us to reconsider what it means to be human—and to crack the creativity code.
Marcus du Sautoy is the Charles Simo- nyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science and Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford and the bestselling author of The Music of the Primes, Symme- try, and The Great Unknown.
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SMART CITIES: INTRODUCING DIGITAL INNOVATION TO CITIES
By Oliver Gassmann, Jonas Böhm and Maximilian Palmié
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Transformation through digital innovation is becoming an imperative for every city. The ‘Smart City’ concept promises to solve the most urgent challenges of progressive urbanization in the areas of mobility, energy, water supply, security, housing, and social inclusion. While some ‘lighthouse cities’ like Barcelona, London, Munich, Lyon, and Vienna are exploiting smart city possibilities, less tena- cious pursuit of such possibilities in the majority of municipalities has resulted in major discrepan- cies between the leaders and the laggards. Although the necessity of action is frequently recognized, an appropriate path of action remains obscure.
Smart Cities: Introducing Digital Innovation to Cities offers answers, with illustrative examples, to questions that many cities are still struggling to answer. The book identifies the core elements and potential of smart cities, best practice methods and tools to be implemented, as well as how diverse stakeholders might be effectively integrated.
“Cities today face tremendous challenges concerning livability, mobility, energy, and com- munication. These challenges are forcing them to reconsider their former self-conception, their func- tionality, and their service offerings. However, cities that focus actively on their objectives and on the req- uisite digital transformation can imagine and realize entirely new living spaces,” the authors argue.
Tapping into years of international research, the book pulls together the authors’ collective experiences in practice-based political, administrative, and eco- nomic projects to provide a common framework to guide and engage key stakeholders in how to realize smart cities.
The book notes that various key questions about smart city develop- ment remain unanswered such as: “What are the core elements of smart cities? What steps should be followed in building them? Where does the greatest potential lie? What is the ideal starting point? What procedures
have other cities applied? What can be learned from pioneers in the field?”
The authors answer these questions in the form of solution paths, accompanied by design concepts and success factors. The book covers the following topics: the future of cities; an overview of smart cities; smart city management model; smart city lighthouses; guidelines for smart city transformation; and tools for making your city a smart city.
Left:
Oliver Gassmann Jonas Böhm Maximilian Palmié.
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Meet Yoshua Bengio
The Human Face of AI
By Nazeem Beegum Rahuman
Artificial Intelligence or AI is a relatively new realm of
study. But there are pioneering scientists who have devoted much of their life to it since the 1990s and Yoshua Bengio is one of them.
PROFILE
As the world enters a Fourth Industrial Revolution, AI is intruding not just into our workplaces and other public spheres where its possibilities are abundant, but even into our bedrooms. Starting with deep learning, Bengio has become the human face of AI by spearheading projects that can help human- ity in the long run. The 55-year-old Paris-born Canadian has brought new dimensions to this field of study, which has taken the tech world by storm.
Bengio’s breakthrough work in the field was A Neural Probabilistic Language Model. Co-authored by three others and published in
The Journal of Machine Learning Research in 2003, the study focused on the joint probability function of sequences of words in a language.
In 2018 he became the computer scientist with the largest number of citations in the world, with Google Scholar recording it as over 130,000, and counting.
A humanitarian approach to AI
Bengio, a recipient of several awards, including the 2018 Turing Award, along with his laboratory at the Montreal Institute of Learning Algorithms (Mila), are on a mission to bridge the gap between AI and society by
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advancing a sustainable, pro-human approach.
His AI for Humanity projects have already made a deep impact on disaster management, agriculture, the environment, promotion of diversity, and tack-
ling gender bias in texts.
He is highly ambitious about the possibilities of
AI, especially in healthcare applications.
In an interview with IBM, he said: “It could have a huge impact on everyone’s health, for example in tackling cancer, which is the main killer in our societies. AI will allow for much more personalized medicine and will bring a revolution in the use of large medical datasets. We’ll see patient-specific treatments which are much more likely to work— for example, ones created using your genomic and expression data. Currently, we are using very blunt instruments to treat patients. This has the poten- tial to change a lot. And we’ll also see a much more
Did you know this?
If you think artificial intelligence is the science of future, and that it is being used only in self-driving cars, you are totally wrong.
It is there with you all day long: when you sign into social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Pinter- est, and much more.
Banks and ride hailing apps are other major users of AI-based technology.
efficient use of doctors’ time.”
Element AI, a Montreal-based AI incubator he
cofounded in 2016 and which can produce real-world business applications, is another one of Bengio’s big contributions to the field.
A year later, he joined Botler AI, a startup based in Montreal, as a strategy adviser. Bengio, who has been named an ‘Officer of The Order of Canada’, cur- rently serves as scientific and technical adviser for Recursion Pharmaceuticals, a tech-first life science company.
His findings have also revolutionized the world of computer vision and computer graphics.
According to the Association for Computing Tech- nology, which bestowed Bengio and two others with the Turing Award, which has been dubbed the Nobel Prize for computing, one of his computer applica- tions can create “original images, reminiscent of the creativity that is considered a hallmark of human intelligence.”
Will machines overpower humans?
The introduction of AI into industrial production has raised the specter of super-intelligent machines erasing humans at workplaces. But several experts have ruled out this possibility because machines, be it AI or deep learning or any ordinary machine, can- not function without the input of human intelligence.
In Bengio’s words, the applications that indus- trial systems have derived from deep learning “such as speech recognition, machine translation, image search, self-driving cars, vision systems for blind
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PROFILE
people, etc. take advantage of progress in deep supervised learning. Yet humans are very good at unsupervised learning and we need to make sub- stantial progress in that direction to approach human-level AI.”
Asked how computers could develop their rea- soning to reach the level of a human, he said: “It is difficult to say. Knowledge graphs were designed to be curated by humans but we may need to learn other forms of representation that are more amenable to being extracted from data automatically—from doc- uments, for example— by deep neural nets.”
‘Neural networks’ refer to systems composed of layers of relatively simple computing elements called neurons that are simulated in a computer.
However, some AI technologists are optimistic about figuring out the reasoning challenge in the next five to ten years and assert that deep learning might actually be part of the solution. Which means, the world expects more from Yoshua Bengio.
Background
A graduate in electrical engineering, Yoshua Ben- gio did his postgraduate studies in computer science
and later obtained a PhD in computer science from McGill University, a public research higher educa- tion institution in Montreal, Canada. According to his website: “Since 1993 he has been a professor in the Department of Computer Science and Opera- tional Research at the Université de Montréal. In addition to holding the Canada Research Chair in Statistical Learning Algorithms, he is the founder and scientific director of Mila, the world’s largest university-based research group in deep learning.”
Mila has placed Montreal at the top of the AI eco- system, leading some major companies and several AI startups to establish labs there.
Though Bengio is known for work on artificial neural networks and deep learning, his interests extend to other fields too including generative adver- sarial networks, neural machine translation, word embeddings, denoising autoencoders, neural lan- guage models, learning to learn etc.
Bengio is considered as one of the three people most responsible for advancing deep learning in the 1990s and 2000s, the other two being Geoffrey Hin- ton and Yann LeCun, with whom he shared the latest Turing Award.
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SPSEPAEKAEKRESR’ S’ COCRONRENRER
The Impact of Blockchain in Knowledge Transfer
By Marta Piekarska
I work at The Linux Foundation, which was established 19 years ago to promote the market infrastructure of open source platforms and codes across all major industries. We have implemented projects that you might have heard about, such as Automotive Grade Linux (AGL), an open source project that has been integrated into most BMW cars. We have also developed a cloud computing platform called Kubernetes that is integrated into most software services provided today, and Let’s Encrypt, an international accreditation body that certifies the security of software and websites for free.
Two years ago, speaking with key members and offi- cials, our CEO said the following: We at the Foundation promote open source platforms and help other founda- tions to develop them. Our model does not fit Bitcoin but the basic technology is interesting and this knowl- edge is important. Bitcoin and blockchain are not the same. Cryptocurrency and blockchain are not the same.
Our Foundation has developed Hyperledger, a global and collaborative open source programming
community, which is developing cross-industry block- chain technologies that will be of enormous benefit to enterprises.
The Foundation’s goal is to develop the basic codes and frameworks for distributed ledger and enter- prise-level open source platforms. Such platforms support commercial transactions, provide commu- nity-oriented, open and balanced infrastructure, build technical communities, educate the public, and more
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SPEAKERS’ CORNER
importantly, strengthen our community among other communities.
In short, we are all about open source development. From a small base, we have grown exponentially and now count 890 members, including Intel, Deloitte and others, and major brands such as J.P. Morgan, Wells Fargo, and companies like Monax and other startups.
We have seen a big increase in membership from China and Asia Pacific—they now compose 40 percent of members. The Monetary Authority of Singapore and the Bank of England are members. Our membership is broad and we are happy about that. The question we face now is: what is blockchain and how it will contrib- ute to the advancement of knowledge?
Blockchain can be viewed as the tradeoffs that we make when we begin to cooperate and interact with each other, where we have to develop both the content and form of the data we share—from trying to write on the sand and rocks to printed records and papers.
Today, we have moved into the digital space. In the digital world, where there is more than a real copy, the challenge is to determine which versions are real and agree with each other. Next comes the role of the internet, which is a great treasure for humanity. On the internet, everyone can publish and claim that their version is the real one, which poses a challenge.
In response, we have begun to find a mechanism for reaching consensus and agreement in a mathematically sound way that avoids conflict. Thus, we have devel- oped the blockchain technique. This is different from the Bitcoin digital currency or ‘cryptocurrency.’ Block- chain provides us with an open source network that transcends all borders in a fast, secure and encrypted manner. It represents a decentralized way to reach consensus on transactions and information relating to the transfer of assets between us. These assets may be anything and may relate to the transfer of data or even vehicles among persons.
One of blockchain’s hallmarks is that it achieves
Dr. Marta Piekarska serves as the Director Hyperledger. Prior to Hyperledger, she worked as tect at Blockstream.
of Ecosystem at a Security Archi-
confidence and transparency. Any information that you place in the block connects to the previous block. What is important here is that if I want to change any infor- mation, I can tell everyone about that change.
Blockchain is transforming the world of knowledge transfer through various applications. For example, it has enabled the creation of a company that allows musi- cians to request and claim their copyrights. Using the Hyperledger Sawtooth framework that we developed, the musician can claim their rights for every exploita- tion of their musical works. Another example relates to academic certificates and reputation. Universities can enter certificates and grades in the blockchain and collaborate with governments and students to create a blockchain-embedded academic reputation system that can be shared across borders and across a distrib- uted ledger.
Another thing we can do is reuse research i.e. to insert each research study in the blockchain so that research topics are counted and reused as needed, creating a solution to the problem of how to reuse the studies.
Of course, investments should be made in technol- ogy but many of these open source technologies do not need to be converted. Yes, it is a technology but all you need is expertize in computer science.
We run an intensive course that teaches open source principles on the website www.hyperledger. org. The course is offered for free so everyone is free to take advantage of it and to review it. We have working groups on specific topics to which everyone can sub- scribe. For example, there are healthcare work groups and working groups for smartphones. We have a begin- ners-level course. We have an active blog. One of our most important activities are our forums, including one in Dubai, which provide an opportunity to speak about blockchain and everything related to it.
Dr. Piekarska obtained her BSc in Electrical and Computer Engi- neering from Warsaw University of Technology and double Master’s Degrees of Computer Science and Informatics from the Technical University of Berlin and Warsaw University of Technology. She recently received her PhD in User-Informed Design of Privacy Tools. Previously, she was associated with Deutsche Telekom as the Lead Architect on the Future of Mobile Privacy, a collaboration with Mozilla and Deutsche Telekom improving Firefox OS.
www.mbrf.ae
JULY 2019 / FLASHES 39

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40 FLASHES / JULY 2019

AGRICULTURE
Brazil’s
Journey from Importer to Major Food Exporter
By Sadab Kitatta Kaaya
Between 2014 and 2018, Brazil jumped into second position among the biggest exporters of agricultural products to the 28-country European Union.
Brazil had a market share of 10.2 percent of all food exports to the EU, amounting to €11.9 million, according to the agri-food trade statistical factsheet published by the EU Commission’s Directorate-General for Agriculture and Rural Development.
The top food exporter to the EU is the United States with about €12.1 million over
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JULY 2019 / FLASHES 41

EXPLORE
the same period.
By comparison, Brazil imported food products
worth €1.7 million from the EU market, a testament to the significant shift that Brazil has made from importer to major world exporter in this sector.
It has been a 40-year journey that has seen remarkable investment in the agricultural sector which started in the 1970s with the founding of the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa) working under the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Food Supply.
Embrapa invested in successful research and spearheaded important public–private partnerships to develop agricultural technologies suitable for Brazil’s tropical climate.
This is how Cerrado, a vast tropical savanna ecoregion covering the States of Goiás, Mato Grosso do Sul, Mato Grosso, Tocantins, and Minas Gerais, has seen massive investments that have greatly expanded the agricultural sector and consolidated the country’s agribusiness.
For more than 50 years, this region, because of its tropical savannah grasslands, was known for its beef production. The soils were thought to be not suitable for cereals production but with the introduction of biotechnology, it has developed into Brazil’s breadbasket since the 2000s.
Farmlands here cover an area of 200 million hectares, and because of the investments, crop production increased from 3 to 48 million tons between 1977 and 2014, while the number of beef cattle soared from 3 to 28 million heads, according to a study published by ResearchGate.
“To be able to make use of soil which had been considered useless soil for agriculture for 500 years was a game-changing innovation,” said Roberto Jaguaribe, President of the Brazilian agency for the Promotion of Exports and Investments (Apex-Brasil), as quoted in Farmers Guardian, a UK-based weekly
newspaper.
In an interview published on Crop Life
International’s blogging platform, Adriana Brondani, Executive Director of the Brazil-based Council for Biotechnology Information, attributed the remarkable turnaround to the realization that Brazil had to develop production models tailored to its tropical climate.
“Forty years ago, best practices in agriculture were developed based on conditions found in temperate regions. These models were not suited to Brazil’s tropical climate, seasons, weather, and land,” Brondani said.
“As Brazilians farmers, we realized that we needed to develop our own model of farming that would work best here—and that included investing in technology and agricultural innovation. This customized Brazilian model of agriculture, which included a
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AGRICULTURE
widespread adoption of biotech crops, has greatly increased our country’s production of food, fiber, and fuel,” she added.
The Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO), the United Nations specialized agency that leads efforts to fight hunger, has reported that Brazil’s agricultural exports increased in 2017 to reach $96 billion.
The FAO noted that Brazil’s positive trade balance in agriculture increased too, with exports totalling $82 billion compared to $71 billion the previous year. This, according to the UN body, was the second largest positive trade balance in the country’s history.
GOVERNMENT INCENTIVES
With a vision of being “a modern and agile institution that promotes the strengthening of rural producers and the quality of agricultural products”
the Brazilian government through its Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Food Supply has extended subsidies to farmers to the tune of $64 billion—or about six percent of the country’s budget.
According to the agricultural ministry website (www.agricultura.gov.br), under the government’s 2019/2020 Safra Plan, there are more financing options for rural producers.
“Some measures to improve access, increase the supply of credit and reduce financial costs will be implemented through a provisional measure: CPR in dollars, the Fraternal Guarantee Fund, Equity of Affectation and equalization of interest for cereals,” a statement on the ministry’s website reads.
This agricultural season, the sector will receive 225.59 billion Brazilian reals (about $58.65 billion) of which, 222.74 billion reals (about $57.91 billion) is for rural credit to fund marketing and industrialization.
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44 FLASHES / JULY 2019
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Combining
Community
and Technology to
Fight Crime
When his home country, Uganda, experienced a spike attacks on residences, 29-year-old Anatoli Kirigwajjo banged heads with two colleagues, Fredrick Kasoma and Nasser Kawesa, to come up with a computer-based security application to police their neighbourhoods.
INTERVIEW
The App, Yunga, has since been copy- righted by their company Yunga Technologies which is helping residents of a village on the outskirts of Uganda’s capital Kampala to monitor the security of their premises with a simple portable device that connects to their smartphones.
Their innovation won them $5,000 in seed capital and $25,000 in Amazon Web Services credits at GIST Tech-I, a global pitch compe- tition for science and technology innovators funded by the United States State Depart- ment’s Global Innovation through Science and Technology Initiative. They received the award during the Global Entrepreneurship Congress held in Bahrain on April 24 last.
Kirigwajjo, the team leader at Yunga Tech- nologies spoke to Sadab Kitatta Kaaya.
Can you tell us about your application and how you came up with the innovation?
Yunga is a local word, which means to join or connect. The inspiration for this innova- tion came from the community given that
Uganda has about 43,000 police officers who have to watch over a population of over 40 million Ugandans. When you put those two figures together, you can see it is really very hard for the police to meet the demands of everyone.
We were hearing about instances of inse- curity everywhere in the community, ranging from attacks on small retailers to big shops, residences etc, and it appeared that not enough was being done to respond to the situation.
Growing up, we were told that your neigh- bour was your first line of defense and that everyone near you could be the best person to give you security. So, operating in the digi- tal space, that is how we came up with the innovation called Yunga, which is basically leveraging the power of the community to provide security to each other digitally.
So, what we have done is designing through science and technology a portable device that we can give to a community, say, of about five households, who install these simple devices.
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46 FLASHES / JULY 2019
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INTERVIEW
Then with a simple press of a button all those neighbours will be notified that you are under attack.
How does it work?
This App works on a network, meaning when you acquire a device from us, we connect it to your handheld device – it can be a smartphone or any feature phone. The advantage with con- necting it to your phone is that even when you are away and your home is attacked, you can still be notified regardless of whether you are connected to the internet or not. That means that you don’t have to be at your home or busi- ness premise to respond to an attack.
This being a policing App, how have the Ugandan security agencies warmed to it?
Being at the initial stages, we haven’t reached out to many of them yet because what we wanted was to do first was create a standalone solution. But yes, we have been piloting our solution in the Kigoowa–Ntinda district in northeast Kampala and the police there have responded positively because they get a timely alert when there are any attacks in the area. But in the event that the police decide they are not willing to work with us, we should still be able to continue. That is why we have entered into a partnership with a private security company that can offer rapid responses on our behalf.
Are there any achievements to report to date? Are there any indications of a fall in crime rates in the area where you have been piloting it?
We started this pilot about two months ago. Before installation, when we first heard from our clients, they were telling us about how the security situation was in their area. They told us many sad stories of being attacked at night while they slept and having all of their house- hold property stolen plus stories of physical and sexual harassment. But they have said that ever since we connected them, our dashboard hasn’t recorded any such attacks.
And since they are connected 24/7, we inter- act with them on a daily basis. The only issue we have detected is that when power goes off, the devices will not work. We are trying to solve this with our updated version, which will keep devices working even when the electricity goes off.
What are your future prospects?
We want to be a next generation community security company because it is not sustaina- ble to pay $200 every month to hire a security guard. Very few Ugandans can afford this. But by acting collectively, at a small fee of about $3 each, they can be protected by drawing on their network and also have a rapid security response.

READ
GOALS: HOW TO GET THE MOST OUT OF YOUR LIFE
By Zig Ziglar
Drawing on his forty-plus years as a world-class motivational speaker, Zig Ziglar identifies and shows precisely how to achieve what people want most from life: to be happy, healthy, reasona- bly prosperous, secure, to have friends, peace of mind, a firm spiritual founda- tion, a good family, relationships, and most important of all—to have hope.
In this book, the author points out that you not achieve a goal unless you truly own it. ‘’When you take hold of these ideas and follow the procedures, you will accomplish goals.’’ he says. “Success can only be achieved when good opportunities and good prepa- rations are combined, but to get what we want and achieve our goals we must define at the outset, it is absolutely
indispensable to set goals if we are to succeed,” Ziglar said. “Defining goals will make you feel that it is important to be committed to the best of what you have, to develop what you own, what you can do or what you really do,” he added.
FUTURE-READY LEADERSHIP
STRATEGIES FOR THE FOURTH INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
THE LITTLE BOOK
OF KINDNESS
EVERYDAY ACTIONS TO CHANGE YOUR LIFE AND THE WORLD AROUND YOU
By Bernadette Russell
Prompted by the seeming hopelessness of the world around her, Bernadette Russell made a pledge to be kind to a stranger every day for a year. The experi- ence left her wanting to inspire others. Her book is packed with fun ideas, practical tips, and interactive exercises that encour- age you to ‘be kind’ in every area of life—online, to strangers, to the environment, in your com- munity, to yourself. Change the world, one act of kindness at a time.
Bernadette Russell started the book as a blog called 366 Days Of Kindness in 2011, which she con- ceived as a response to the UK riots that year. She is a column- ist for Balance magazine.
By Chris R. Groscurth
Chris R. Groscurth provides exec- utive leadership teams with the information, tools, and advice they need to lead their organizations into
the ‘future of work,’ characterized by transformative, smart, and connected technologies, including artificial intel- ligence, the internet of things, and automation.
The book unpacks what the Fourth Industrial Revolution and the rise of new industries will require from leaders. The author addresses the mac- roeconomic implications for society of the convergence of the megatrends under way and illuminates the central role played by behavioral economics in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. He also introduces discernment as a strategy for managing future-of- work ethical decisions that inevitably accompany the integration of AI in the workforce.
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JULY 2019 / FLASHES 47
BOOK IN MINUTES

AFTERWORD AFTERWORD
Jamal bin Huwaireb Jamal bin Huwaireb
ositnhcer tfiheeldgsr.eTaot hcaornqeusessthseosfe eanrelyrgMieusswlimises.lyT,hweelannegeudatgoetalkseo spread throughout the world since the great conquests of early
CEO of Mohammed bin Rashid CJaEmOaol fbiMn oHhuawmamirebd bin Rashid
Muslims. The language also showed its amazing ability to absorb
Al Maktoum Knowledge Foundation AClEMOakotfoMumohKamnomweleddbgien FRoaushnidation
written down in other languages. We all know how translation into do good, praise them when they make achievements. Dubai has knowledge that was originally written down in other languages.
Al Maktoum Knowledge Foundation
Arabic reached its zenith during the reign of the Abbasid Caliph the good fortune to have been bestowed by Allah a wise lead- We all know how translation into Arabic reached its zenith dur-
The Ambition of Youth and The Joy of NEW GOLDEN AGE FOR ARABIC
Innovation
LANGUAGE AND TRANSLATION
“What drives nations towards development is not money and wealth but ambi-
“Translation iisstthheefofouunndadtaitoinonofoaf caucltulrtaulrraelnraeisnsainsscaen, caned, aonpdenosptehnesdtohoersdotoirnstteol-
tions... great ambitions. We humans are motivated by ambition and inspiration i l n e t c e t l u l e a l c e t u n a l i l g e h n t e l i n g m h t e e n n t m. ” e n t . ”
more than anything else.”
MohammedbiinRaasshhididAAl Ml Makatkotuomum, V,iVceicPerePsriedseindteanntdanPdrimPreimMeinMistienrisotferthoefUthAeE
H.H. Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister U a n A d E R a u n l d e r R o u f l De r u o b f a i D . u b a i .
of United Arab Emirates, and Ruler of Dubai.
EIEnvethryindkainy,g,Aarrbaabobiucictptprhoreovevflseostowtoboebfaehriaisctrhoiclrahynlganunadgguietascgacepocanabtplienauoboflekuesoefapdkinevgeanpacibnerge, awasbetroecfatsnhteroeafagtdehilieyn
adwgihsecicoihnvwewrehtilichvhaet.wIiteiislsivabela. snIetgduisaoganelatnhcgaetuncatgarnealrtephsiaplltoacrn—adnatomreabsniptyoiosncndi—etntohtiefianca,yscpsuicrltiaeutnriaotlin,fiocor,fscopucelitoauplrdlaels,voetolr-
opment. No surprise, therefore, that the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Knowledge social development. No surprise, therefore, that the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Mak- progress, their desire to arise and move forward. All historical evidence shows that
Foundation cherishes and fosters Arabic through various initiatives such as Bilarabi and toum Knowledge Foundation cherishes and fosters Arabic through various initiatives youth are the heart of any nation and are best placed to realize a nation’s aspirations
the Dubai International Program for Writing.
such as Bilarabi and the Dubai International Program for Writing.
since progress relies on innovation and innovation is the offspring of ambitious youth.
“The Arabic language has suddenly begun to be perfect, and this is the strangest thing “The Arabic language has suddenly begun to be perfect, and this is the strangest God has instilled in young people unlimited abilities to innovate, as well as a fer-
that has happened in human history. It has neither childhood nor aging,” said the late thing that has happened in human history. It has neither childhood nor aging,” said tile imagination, boundless enthusiasm, and a tenacity to persevere and realize their
French philosopher Ernest Renan. This is something we Arabs understand well because it the late French philosopher Ernest Renan. This is something we Arabs understand
ambitions. With young people harboring such huge potential in their hearts, it is essen- is the language that Allah Almighty has decided to speak to all people through the Holy well because it is the language that Allah Almighty has decided to speak to all people
tial that we as a society invest richly in them. Theirs are the energies that will propel
Quran.
through the Holy Quran.
advances in science, the creative arts, economics, and many This divine celebration of Arabic has contributed to its spread throughout the world
This divine celebration of Arabic has contributed to its
showed its amazing ability to absorb knowledge that was originally the hands of young people, inspire and reward them when they
Al-Ma’mun in Baghdad in 830 AD when he ordered translations
ership that recognizes the importance of youth and its infinite ing the reign of the Abbasid Caliph Al-Ma’mun in Baghdad in
into Arabic of books on medicine, mathematics, science, astron- 8ab3i0litAyDtowinhneonvhaeteobrdeecraeudsetroafntshlaetiiroanms ibnitoioAn,rwabhiichofisbaoporkesconmditeidoincitnoep, mroagtrheesms. at- omy, and philosophy developed by the Greeks, thus enriching the Arabic language and
ics,HscisieHnicgeh,naesstsroSnhoeimkhy,ManodhapmhimloesdopbhinyRdaesvheildoApel Md bakyttohuemG, rVeieckesP, rtehsuisdentriacnhdinPgritmhe its vocabulary.
A M r i a n b i s i c t e l r a n o g f u t h a e g e U a A n E d a i n t s d v R o u c l a e b r u o l f a Dr y u . b a i , h a s s a i d : “ W h a t d r i v e s n a t i o n s t o w a r d s d e v e l - At the time of the Renaissance Europe took the opportunity to acquire knowledge of
At the time of the Renaissance Europe took the opportunity to acquire knowl- opment is not money and wealth but ambitions...great ambitions. We humans are Arabic texts that had been formulated five centuries previously. Europeans translated the
edge of Arabic texts that had been formulated five centuries previously. Europeans motivated by ambition and inspiration more than anything else.” Wise words that are best Arabic books to their native languages including: One Thousand and One Nights, the
translated the best Arabic books to their native languages including: One Thousand borne out by the historical evidence of human development. Without ambition, coun- world’s most famous literary fiction collection, translated into French in 1704 by Antoine
and One Nights, the world’s most famous literary fiction collection, translated into tGriaellsawndil;l Tfahlel iTnrtaovealqs uoafgIbmnirBeaottfusttaa;gTnhaetiBoonoaknodfuMnidserds ebvyeAlol-pJmaheizn;tT. hWeitImhopurot vaembeitnitoonf,
French in 1704 by Antoine Galland; The Travels of Ibn Battuta; The Book of Misers pHeuompalenlRoesaestohnebiryeIbnnthTusfiaisl;manfodrMaubqeatdtdeirmaanhdbmyoIbrneKbhealudtuinfu,laliffoeu.ndingfatherofsoci-
by Al-Jahiz; The Improvement of Human Reason by Ibn Tufail; and Muqaddimah by ology. These books inspired the Europeans to advance modern science and discover its Interestingly enough, there are individuals who think that it is enough for countries
Ibn Khaldun, a founding father of sociology. These books inspired the Europeans to mysteries and secrets and led it to become a beacon of scientific, cultural, and literary to have money to achieve their desired development. In fact, they are not correct.
advance modern science and discover its mysteries and secrets and led it to become progress.
Money alone does not propel progress. The most important ingredients for making
a beacon of scientific, cultural, and literary progress.
progress are aspiration and great ambition, as His Highness has noted. History teaches
In the Modern Age, around the first quarter of the nineteenth century, Arabs began to
us that when peoples in rich countries lose their ambition and their sense of joy in In the Modern Age, around the first quarter of the nineteenth century, Arabs read about the most important achievements of Western civilization and have it translated
development and progress, peoples of other countries jump ahead of them.
began to read about the most important achievements of Western civilization and into Arabic. As a result, the Arabic library is full of hundreds of thousands of translated
We know that Mark Zuckerberg invented Facebook when he was just 19 years h b a o v o e k s i t e t x r t a e n n s d l i a n t g e d t o i n a l t l o b r A a r n a c b h i e c s . o A f s k a n o r we s l e u d l t g , e t . h e A r a b i c l i b r a r y i s f u l l o f h u n d r e d s o f
old, that Jan-Koum invented WhatsApp when he was only 27 years old. Graham Bell t h o T u h s a e n r e d s i s o n f o t r d a o n u s l b a t t e t d h a b t o n o a k t s i o e n x s t e c n a n d n i n o g t t p o r o a g l l r b e r s a s n a c n h d e s d e o v f e k l on p o w w l e i t d h g o e u . t k n o w i n g t h e
invTehnetered tishneophdonuebtbethfoatrenhateiownasc4a0n,nKoatrlpBroengzreinsvseantdedethvelcoaprwinithisofuotrktnieosw. Iindgetehde, achievements of other peoples, interacting with this knowledge, and adding to it. Transla-
athciohenileisvtehomef eibnnevtsestnwotoafyrostoihsaelocrhnpigevaoenpdtlhemis,i,nsingotlwederawrceitvtihinetgwhwienintahmistheisisuokefngaoegwnrolieuwsdiengsgew,trhaenondgdiaofdtfedtdrinahnguslmtaotaiintg-.
TiAtryraantbhsilceaitrieoaxnmtsiasizntihtnoegobintehnsetorwvlatnyiogtnuoasagtcehsai,etwvhehaitvleheicsme, slaeodbewraeltifirnegveifaeoswrieiringfntohriesusisesaurlcle,hatehgrasrtoahwnadinvtegratmrneasnldadetourfs
twrahnosslatutidnygArraabbicicctueltxutrseinatsothoetyhearelatnhgeubargidegse, swohfilecocmelmebunraictaintigonfobretigwneerensAeraarbcsheanrsd happier and more prosperous.
aontdhetrapnesolpalteosr.sTwhehroe satruedmyaAnryaobtihcecruvlatuluraebales rtehpeoyrtasreinttheisbisrsiduegetos o,fI cwoismhmyouunaichaatpiopny Our youth in the UAE are lucky because the state is there to provide a helping hand
breatdwienegn. Arabsandotherpeoples.Therearemanyothervaluablereportsinthisissue to innovate, invent, and discover. Our government works to enhance this by providing
too, I wish you a happy reading.
modern technology and artificial intelligence. Let our youth grasp this opportunity
and do their best to serve the people of the UAE and its wise leadership.
48 FLASHES / JULY 2019 48 FLASHES // JJUNE 20119

A RELIABLE INSURANCE
THE BASE FOR A MORE ENJOYABLE LIFE
Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum Business Award 2019, MENA Insurance Award 2019, Insurance Authorities Award for Insurance Disputes Resolution 2018, LRQA ISO 10002:2018 Certification, LRQA ISO 9001:2015 Certification, Rated A- by Standard & Poor’s

50 FLASHES / JULY 2019