A tale of two sheikhdoms

Building everywhere: Qatar is investing heavily in infrastructure

With their oil billions, the Gulf states are on a spending spree in science and technology – inviting Western universities and technology companies to set up classrooms and laboratories. But will the investments pay off?

A close look at two of the biggest science spenders shows contrasting strategies for technology development.  Dubai, one of the seven United Arab Emirates, is a pioneer of diversification from oil into science—drawing 19 universities so far to its “Knowledge Village,” to set up profit-seeking satellite campuses for science, technology and business. Nearby Qatar, by contrast, is a newcomer to the field and is taking a long-term strategy, spending heavily to bankroll labs and classrooms with the help of selected Western academics.

It’s too early to say which strategy, for-profit or for-science, will work best in the long run—but in the meantime, all the spending has prompted a feeding frenzy in the cash-strapped academic world. The rush for oil wealth has drawn academic brand names  such as Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Imperial College London and the Sorbonne, and others such as Australian Wollongong University and Britain’s Middlesex University.

 “This is the only place in academia I have ever been in that is not limited by financial constraints,” says James Holste, associate dean of Texas A&M University’s school of engineering in Qatar. Back in the mother campus in Texas, he adds, no matter how good your proposal is, there is a point you cannot get past in getting finances for projects; here, if you convince Qatar Foundation of the educational value of your project, you will just get the money.

For Arab science, it amounts to a Renaissance – or at least, the money is being made available to fund one. In all, 15 Middle Eastern countries are now running or planning science parks. Dubai was was one of the pioneers – but others are catching on fast. And with leaders conscious of the missed opportunities of the oil-price boom in the mid-1970s, they are banking on the new oil boom and are investing enormous amounts of their petrodollars into projects designed for life after oil. In doing so, they are in fact demonstrating a commitment to science and research hardly ever witnessed in this part of the world.  

A me-too?

On the surface Qatar may seem to be just a copycat of the Dubai and the UAE. After all, Qatar has just recently started doing what the UAE has been doing for quite some time: heavy investing in infrastructure and non-oil sectors; bringing in Western universities; building a technology park with heavy-weight multinational corporations as tenants; and introducing regulations that make the country more business- and foreign labour-friendly.

The UAE is indeed widely believed to be a pioneer in the Gulf region in terms of opening up and diversifying its economy and modernizing higher education. And if media coverage in illustrious magazines can serve as indication of success, then the Dubai emirate is certainly in an enviable position among the region’s cities. Dubai was featured in cover stories of National Geographic and BusinessWeek, to mention just a couple of examples. It was also lavishly dubbed the “Tech Mecca” by Wired magazine and “the most connected city in the Middle East” by the Foreign Direct Investment magazine, a publication of the Financial Times.  

To many, Dubai, and the UAE at large, looked like the best model of doing things in the region—until Qatar’s plans started to be implemented.

By invitation only

“The UAE got the idea going,” says Texas A&M’s Holste, speaking of the UAE’s Knowledge Village (KV) and Qatar’s Education City (EC). “But the way Qatar implemented that concept [of having Western universities open branches locally] is getting a lot of attention because they have done things differently from everybody else.”

And it is no small difference. The UAE offers the facilities, on a lease basis, to any university from around the world interested in setting up shop in its attractive Dubai Knowledge Village – whose universities, nineteen in all, include the Australian Wollongong University, Britain’s Middlesex University, the Indian Mahatma Gandhi University and the Pakistani Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto Institute of Science and Technology, along with other French, American and local universities. Those universities, with the exception of local ones, are operating in Knowledge Village as profit-seeking entrepreneurial entities, with the tuition fees from students as their bread and butter.

Market realities, therefore, largely shape the approach of those universities.   For instance, the courses highest in supply in Dubai’s Knowledge Village are those of business administration and computer science because of the high demand. And because those courses are cost-competitive, very little, if any, is spent on research, “which is necessarily expensive and with no direct financial return,” according to David McGlennon, director of research and outreach in Zayed University, who has done work on research capacity building in the Gulf Cooperation Council countries.

Also, McGlennon adds, universities that are set up in the UAE free zones, including Dubai Knowledge Village, are not required to be accredited through the national system and can be accredited only through the free zone authority. A Knowledge Village spokesperson declined to comment for this story.

In the Education City, by contrast, Qatar cherry-picks select universities and—with the incentive of full financial backing, special benefits to faculty and staff, and extensive financial aid programs to non-Qatari students—invites them to set up branch campuses in the 25,000-acre, and growing, campus.

Each of the invited universities brings in only one school, with the exception of Carnegie Mellon University which has two schools in Qatar: business administration and computer science.  Other Education City branch campuses are Cornell University, with its medical college, Texas A&M’s school of engineering, Virginia Commonwealth’s school of interior and fashion design and Georgetown University’s school of foreign service.

“We are not interested in getting a quick financial return on our investments in the Education City,” says Abdullah Al-Kubaisi, chairman of Qatar Science and Technology Park and principal advisor to Qatar Foundation on science and technology.  

Established in 1995, Qatar Foundation is the institution that spearheads Qatar’s efforts in science, technology and education. The Education City, Al-Kubaisi adds, is part of a larger, state-backed capacity-building plan that is bolstered by other QF projects, such as Qatar Science and Technology Park and Qatar National Research Fund.

Quality not survival

Texas A&M’s associate dean sees Qatar’s Education City approach as better geared for the future. “Qatar Foundation does not push its partners to be entrepreneurial to survive.  Therefore we can think more about quality, and not about survival,” he says.

On that McGlennon agrees. From the R&D perspective, he says, Qatar has a very cohesive strategy. The Dubai-based scientist also notes that, thanks to the recently established Qatar National Research Fund, Qatar has developed its own national R&D priorities, a step he sees vitally necessary for any country serious about advancing its research and development capacity.

Which, of course, is not to say that Dubai does not have money or the willingness to spend on research.  This last February, Sheikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Dubai’s ruler and the UAE’s prime minister, launched the Knowledge Fund which is geared towards supporting “government projects such as scholarships, scientific research, development of teaching staff and educational infrastructure improvement”. Beyond those general outlines, not much was disclosed about the priorities of the fund.

Big is beautiful

Why Qatar seems to have a more cohesive approach, however, may be due to factors more basic than plans and willingness. After all, the UAE is seven times Qatar’s size, and three times Qatar’s GDP and population. The UAE is composed of seven emirates (and hence seven rulers), with varying degrees of resource endowments, and diverging administration styles and priorities.

For instance, Abu Dhabi is much more endowed with oil revenues than Dubai – revenues that Abu Dhabi can apply to projects with no potential of short-term returns, like Qatar. Last October France’s renowned Sorbonne opened its doors for the first class in its Abu Dhabi campus. Britain’s Imperial College London is helping develop a diabetes clinic and research centre. And last February, an agreement was inked between Abu Dhabi-based Masdar Institute of Science and Technology and MIT to offer a graduate programme in the UAE.

Qatar, on the other hand, is very rich in natural gas resources — and with one ruler, Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Thani, to call the shots.  And with a real growth rate of GDP of 7.1 per cent for 2006 and forecast to accelerate, Qatar’s big ambitions may be realised. Last November Qatar’s emir pledged 2.8 per cent of annual GDP (or about $1.5 billion) to R&D. That stands out in a region where average spending on R&D does not exceed 0.02 per cent of gross national product, most of which goes to salaries, according to the United Nations Development Programme’s 2003 Arab Human Development Report.

“I think Qatar wants to establish itself as the ‘knowledge centre’ of the region,” says Tony Murphy, vice president of Gartner Consulting, who is familiar with research and development initiatives in the region. “And in this it is likely to be quite successful.”

Last February, Qatar Foundation unveiled its plans for Sidra Medical and Research Center, a collaborative project between the foundation and Cornell University’s Medical College in Doha. The endowment to be allocated to this project is $8 billion, probably the largest in the world for a medical facility.

“Almost everything that is being built here is the biggest of its kind in the world,” says Texas A&M’s Holste. He cites Ras Laafan liquefied natural gas train and QAFCO urea factory as examples of this trend. “Nobody is building bigger or more modern things.”

A winning model?

So which of these approaches is likely to pan out in the long term: the UAE’s generally entrepreneurial model or Qatar’s by-invitation-only and big-is-beautiful model?  

“From the R&D perspective,” says Zayed University’s McGlennon, “Qatar has a higher chance of succeeding based on the way its initiatives are currently structured”

Still, the amount of spending on, and the level of a state’s commitment to R&D, though essential, is only one aspect of creating a knowledge-based economy. An environment hospitable to scientists, adequate intellectual property laws, foreign labour-friendly regulations, and efficient services sector (such as the banking sector) are all prerequisites for a knowledge economy to evolve. In some of those areas, the UAE is ahead of Qatar.

And some even see the whole comparison as a distraction. “They are both good models as far as they achieve the goals for which they were set up,” says Mohammed Hammoudi, Microsoft Qatar country manager. He adds that while Dubai has an expressed “commercial” character, and proved very successful at that, Qatar is going in the direction of R&D, and may end up as successful. Microsoft has offices in both Dubai Internet City and Qatar Science and Technology Park.

Farouk El-Baz, a former NASA geologist and advisor to Qatar Foundation, notes that although Qatar and the UAE have selected different paths in their development endeavors, both have “surpassed most other Arab countries in putting a high priority on improving education of their citizens.  This will bode well for their future.”

He also points out that while Qatar has one approach, the UAE has many. “Qatar can develop a model to apply throughout the country, which would be more difficult to do in the UAE.” El-Baz, director of Boston University’s remote sensing centre, believes that the great success and visible impact of improving education in Qatar and the UAE will encourage other Arab countries to implement some of the successful initiatives, each in its own way.

Yet the visibility of Qatar’s and the UAE’s projects sometimes invites undisguised competition.  One example is the surging interest in building science and technology parks across the region. Fifteen countries in the Middle East, including the six Gulf Cooperation Council countries, have already established, or announced plans for, such parks. Eulian Roberts, CEO of Qatar Science and Technology Park, welcomes this development because, he says, this sends the right signal regarding this region’s seriousness about R&D.

That competition might also be a challenge.  “What I see as one of the biggest challenges for the region is to get past national competition attitude [and move] towards actually true, regular cooperation and coordination,” says Texas A&M’s Holste.

What remains a large looming problem for both Qatar and the UAE is how to ensure an adequate supply of skilled labour for the mega-projects being undertaken and the ambitious plans being drawn. McGlennon says that the constant turnover in short term contracts (two to three years) will not be very helpful to R&D, which is naturally time-consuming.

Indeed, already the shortage of skilled and committed labour is a palpable problem. Tidu Maini, Pro Rector of the Imperial College London and advisor to Qatar Foundation, says that a major challenge now is to hire the right people who find the foundation’s vision, rather than money incentives, its main attraction.