00:00And I wanted to begin by saying, you know, we set the scene by saying that much of the time now, success means speed.
00:07So I wanted to ask you, how agile are the policies that you're creating that are really going to allow tech companies to thrive and to be successful in Kuwait?
00:18First of all, thank you, Nikki, for having us here.
00:21It will be very hard to follow a robot performance, but we'll try our best.
00:26Hopefully we can leave the stage better than the robot.
00:30Yes, Kuwait policies are built for agility and measurable impact.
00:38We pride ourselves that to be flexible enough to meet the development of technology and the needs that require to push for Kuwait to be like a hub for the development.
00:58And of course, we engage with tech leaders and all interested parties to make sure our policies and regulation is agile enough.
01:13Public-private partnerships are really important for you in Kuwait.
01:20What do you see as your role in creating nationwide infrastructure that you've been developing, digital and physical infrastructure, in enabling the private sector to come in and be able to set up?
01:32How key are those PPPs for you?
01:34It is very important.
01:37We have a very successful engagement with the private sector in deploying the mobile networks, and we are one of the best in the world when it comes to quality coverage and the prices.
01:50As I said before, regulation do play a part that created this room for the private companies on the mobile operators to leverage this regulation in a proper manner where we are in the, I would say, one of the best in the world.
02:12Now, for the other parts of infrastructure, like FIX and others, yes, we are, at the moment, creating this public-private company that will handle the continuous rollout of fiber optics.
02:29And any, to meet all the technological requirements and needs, inshallah.
02:39I think you'll be a modest, Your Excellency, because I think one thing that people may not know about Kuwait is the youthful population and the connectivity of that youthful population.
02:49And I think that's an incredible feat.
02:51You know, 99.7% of the population is online.
02:54Yes.
02:54And that is created by, today, by wireless connectivity, mostly.
03:00And hopefully, very soon, we'll meet that with the fixed infrastructure.
03:03We have huge demand coming up, as you stated, with the private sector, especially today.
03:11We have Google and Microsoft that they will establish their regions in Kuwait.
03:18And that would require high demand on the connectivity part.
03:23Plus, the infrastructure overall.
03:27That youthful population is going to be an incredible workforce of the future, as well as being the end users for tech companies.
03:35Sheikh Abdullah, if I may ask you, how do you see nurturing that youthful population to ensure that they are going to be the pipeline of the future workforce for private tech companies that are coming to Kuwait?
03:47I think youthful.
03:48I think youth present the most powerful asset in Kuwait and with 68% of our population under the age of 35.
03:59And they are, we are a home of one of the youngest, most connected digitalists in the region.
04:10They, this generation did not only use the technology, they create, they innovate, and they build solutions to address our time challenges.
04:23Partnership with global leading, as, as I mentioned, technological company like Google and Microsoft, to prepare our workforce in an AI-driven economy,
04:40where we need to build people that is ready to not only use the technology to train, to make them ready for cybersecurity, digital or data analytics, and so on.
04:58And this is an opportunity for international investors to get engaged with, with a ready-made talent pool in that country.
05:07And before we wrap, I would just like to ask you, Your Excellency, policy and regulation is going to be key.
05:12We see cybersecurity as a growing risk.
05:16It's moving up the ranks all the time of the global risk reports.
05:19How important is it for you as the government to ensure that the, the policy and regulation that's going to underpin global cybersecurity is not
05:28being thought of as something afterwards, it's actually being built into the system from the get-go?
05:32Yes. As we modernize our infrastructure, it's very important to understand that it has to be robust, scalable, and, of course,
05:42cybersecurity is one of the most important things that we have to take care of.
05:47So we have a government body that is today looking after these policies and regulation, and these policies and regulation should not hinder any development coming in the future.
06:00It is flexible enough to make sure our infrastructure is secure, connectivity is secure, and, of course, our citizen privacy,
06:12and whatever is related to these types of risk, yes, they are on the rise, but same time to have to make sure we have the proper tools and the skilled people to take care of that.
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