It’s almost time for us to wave goodbye to 2020 and I can assure you of your place in the queue right behind me. We none of us saw this coming and many of us have been humbled by how unprepared our whole species was for the challenges we have faced this year. From nations struggling to acquire PPE, researchers struggling to find a vaccine and medical staff struggling to save lives, right through to parents struggling to keep their families together and ordinary people struggling to come to terms with the ‘new normal’, we have all found ourselves in extraordinary times.
It’s not over, of course it’s not. We might look back on the year and take stock, but we have a long way yet to go. 2021 will bring new challenges. But as we enter the new year, we must plan for the future and learn from the past. We need to embrace a spirit of hope and resilience. We know that we shall prevail, that it is in our hands to come through this together, wiser, stronger and reinvigorated.
We need to reinvigorate government. In The Emirates we introduced reforms of government that were intended to create smarter, faster and more responsive models of governance.
The difference between a failed state and a successful state is government, nothing more or less.
The quality of governance is critically important in challenging times and programs like smart government, performance excellence in government and government accelerators have not only helped us to be agile and flexible, but have validated our focus on these programs. We are sharing our experience with neighbours, in Egypt, Uzbekistan, Jordan and others, even as we incorporate learnings from 2020 in our thinking. Our focus on forward planning, with initiatives such as UAE Centennial 2071, remains relentless – and we have brought everything we have learned in 2020 to bear on that program and others. When we stop learning, when we stop exploring, we go backwards. It’s critically important that we learn every lesson we can from 2020.
We clearly need to focus on economic reinvigoration. The global economy has suffered an enormous setback and millions face challenges to the prosperity, stability and opportunities they can envisage. This is a time when we need to bring in new thinking, embrace new ways of working and seek growth in new markets and sectors. New ways of working, communicating, learning and collaborating have emerged – new markets for ideas and creativity have blossomed. The Emirates’ Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence has seen his portfolio expand to include the Digital Economy and Remote Work precisely because we see transformational effects emerging from our 2020 lessons learned. The Emirates’ economic clusters, bringing together researchers, academics, entrepreneurs and traders from over 195 nationalities, are supporting new ideas from space sciences to hydroponic agriculture. We enter 2021, our 50th year as a nation, with a remarkable range of new global market opportunities.
And we need to reinvigorate Hope. 2020 was a bruising year for everyone. We have lost time at school, many have lost their jobs. Millions of families have endured bereavement, while most have faced loneliness and the pangs of isolation and lock-down. But we can see our way ahead if we follow the light – Hope is the quality that leads us to the future. The Emirates has shipped over 1,600 metric tonnes of aid to 120 countries, supporting over 1.6 million medical professionals globally. We have opened reading, digital education and skills development programmes to the Arabic speaking world so that our region, where the Pandemic merely multiplied the miseries of war and economic decline, can truly believe in – and realise – the potential of its youth. Our young people have so much to give – if The Emirates can go from starting its first development program in space engineering in 2006 to developing a mission to Mars in just fifteen years, imagine what our region could be capable of if it just had access to learning resources, a focus on youth development and the courage to believe in Hope?
So, yes, let’s bid farewell to 2020. But let’s look forward together to a better, smarter, brighter, kinder future – guided by Hope.
H.E. name : Mohammad Abdullah Al Gergawi
