On March 16, StrategEast hosted an online round table for the GCC states’ representatives “Digital MECCA: Middle East, Caucasus, Central Asia as a digital single market”.
The event participants discussed potential for a mutually beneficial partnership within the MECCA (Middle East, Caucasus, Central Asia) region and ways to achieve it. By collaborating with IT companies from Caucasus and Central Asia, Gulf countries stand to gain twice: not only as consumers of high level digital services but also as a hub for global tech companies to open their offices locally.
Opening the discussion, Anatoly Motkin, President of StrategEast revealed the most pressing issues of creating partnerships for the sucessfull tech ecosystem development.
“Over the past year, the new reality has emerged: the region of Central Asia and the Caucasus is searching for a new strategic partner. And the GCC countries can and should become such a partner,” Mr. Motkin told.
According to President of StrategEast, bringing together the Middle East, the Caucasus and Central Asia can form a Digital Mecca -a single digital market, where intellectual passion, global entrepreneurial skills, and smart money from the Gulf combined with cutting-edge technologies from the Caucasus and Central Asia that will lead to the highest concentration of intellectual power with global impact and create a global center of digital excellence.
Mariam Lashkhi, Member of the Parliament of Georgia emphasized the importance of digital transformation in the region and brought out some cases and insights from Georgia: “The baseline for developing innovation was building a democratic environment, enhancing rule of law and transparency. On the other hand, with lack of natural resources such as oil, we leveraged our human capital potential, and applied a systematic approach and institutional framework to develop digital ecosystem”.
Sultonmurod Rasulov, Head of export department of IT PARK Uzbekistan shared the recipe of an “Uzbekistani IT miracle”: “During the last couple of years, there has been a tremendous growth of jobs created and IT services export. IT Park’s activities coupled with huge support from the government are one of the key drivers of IT growth in Uzbekistan. Today there are around 1200 companies –residents of the IT Park and the IT exports grew from $600,000 in 2019 to $140 mln last year.”
Avigail Menashe, Executive Director of Kyrgyz Software and Service Developers Association pointed out the Kyrgyz strong IT talent pool: “Kyrgyzstan’s creative economy is under the spotlight. Over the last 5 years a wave of exceptional creatives from the country flocked to disrupt of transform various industries.”
Jason Harman, SVP, Head of Middle East at EPAM talking about the most important issues while choosing new destinations, and cross-border collaboration. “In a battle for talent we were looking for destinations comfortable for people to move to, education and regulatory framework to support the expansion of business and the high level of digital skills to allow for the growth.”
During the panel discussion, the speakers talked about leveraging the strengths of their regions and building a thriving digital economy.
The event video recording is available here
