His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, has launched the “National Program for Coders”, which aims to design national initiatives for developing talents, expertise and innovative projects in the field of coding.
As part of the program, the UAE has entered into an agreement with major technology companies including Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Cisco, IBM, LinkedIn, Nvidia, and Facebook to train and attract coders and to set up tech companies that will go global.
Within five years, Sheikh Mohammed wants to train 100,000 programmers and coders, create 1,000 digital companies to boost the Emirati economy and increase government support for startups from $0.41billion to $1.09 billion.
“The new program represents a new step towards establishing our digital economy. The world is rapidly changing and the fast-growing digital economy will create new types of jobs. To thrive in the ever-evolving world, we must be ready to quickly cope with the emerging trends,” Sheikh Mohammed wrote on Twitter.
The UAE will launch several initiatives to support the program’s outputs, including a comprehensive platform to link coders with the private and academic sectors, supporting businessmen in finding specialized talents to develop innovative projects, granting the golden visa to the best international coders, developing the experiences of Emirati coders to become among the best globally, supporting national startups working in the field of the digital economy, and empowering social and humanitarian coding-based projects.
Within its next phase, the UAE will host 10 ‘hackathon’ competitions that will bring together the elite programmers for events in the emirates. The program will invite coders from around the world to find innovative solutions to 100 government, economic, technological, health and services challenges and help them to accelerate the adoption of modern technologies.
Writing code, developing computer software, and building mobile applications are among the most sought-after skills in the future global job market. While some traditional jobs will be lost to technological advances in the coming years, many thousands will be created in the industry.
Research by Monster, one of the world’s biggest job portals, puts demand for information technology skills and qualifications at the forefront, higher than rating for engineering, which was ‘moderate’ and science qualifications, at ‘moderate to low. It estimates 10 percent global job growth over 10 years, potentially millions of jobs and a median salary of $90,000 per year today.
