Name: Digital Transformation Across Borders: What's At Stake?
Uploaded: 2025-05-21
Duration: 13 min 28 s

Global technology policy is increasingly influenced by major tech firms based in a handful of wealthy nations. The Digital Cooperation Organization, which is headquartered in Saudi Arabia, is the world’s first stand-alone organization focused on the global digital economy. Its goal? To ensure technology drives prosperity and opportunity for all. We'll discuss the policy, legislation, and education solutions required to make this a reality, so that no country, business, or sector of society is left behind. 

Digital Transformation Across Borders: What's At Stake?

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Hello again everyone and Secretary General, thank you so much for being here with us. It's a real honor. I want to start with the basics for anyone in the room who isn't familiar with the digital cooperation Organization, which we can also call the DCO for brevity. It was founded in 2020 by 5 countries, I believe. Tell me how that founding came about and why the organization was needed. Well, certainly, but first, thank you for having me. Um, it's great to have, uh, the, uh, uh, the, uh, fortune most, uh, powerful woman chapter here in Saudi. Uh, it is the place to be, um, uh, so we're very happy to have you here and thank you for having us. And going back to, uh, DCO, uh, as we see digital economy now it's growing very rapidly, you know, last year alone it was 16% of the overall GDP. Expected in 2030, 70% of the GDP is going to be driven by digital solutions. Therefore, that comes with abundance of opportunities, but to harness these opportunities, countries need to transform. And for them to transform they really need to have a lot of uh uh um investment in either capital and investments either uh policy regulations, human capital development infrastructure as well, uh, very difficult for one country to do it alone. And this is where the DCO has been established, established for in the sense that digital economy is the way forward to diversify their economies, and they cannot do it alone. They have to share best practices. So therefore these five member countries created the Digital Cooperation Organization, the first intergovernmental organization focusing on digital economy and fast forward till today we're very proud that we were. Present 16 member states from Asia, Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, and we're expanding in size 800 million in population that by itself is a huge consumer market for any technology company that wants to expand. The objective or the mission of DCO is to enable every person, every government, every, uh, company the opportunity to prosper in the digital economy, and that's by facilitating. the connecting the supply and the demand between governments and between the private sector and those 1st 5 countries you started with just for contact with Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Georgia, Kuwait, and Pakistan. Tell me a bit about a tangible example maybe of how you're working with one of the member countries at the moment. It's, you know, it's great to talk in broad brush strokes about digital digital inclusivity in the economy, but what does that look like on a practical level right now in one of your countries? Well, we truly believe that um digital economy is a landscape that looks at digital business enablers and also society as well. And when we look at uh the the um the uh engine that flew flows the digital economy is the private sector. And therefore for any country to really prosper, it needs to have the right legislation policies to enable these private sectors to co-create and co-design solutions with the governments, and this is where sometimes there's a communication gap between the governments and the private sector. This is where we come in. We come in and we look at what is the business landscape of every country and we see where are the gaps, where are the areas of improvement when it comes to policies and regulations we also recommend the um the packages and the incentives to attract the right investments. Last month alone we uh we celebrated uh attracting more than $700 million to Pakistan. All digital digital investments and what's Pakistan going to put that money towards in terms of its digital economy? Oh, in, in multiple either in infrastructure when it comes to connectivity, cloud computing, also, uh, last last year alone, Pakistan included or added to its GDP $3.8 billion because of software exports. So definitely that investment will go into human capital. As well as uh computing power when it comes to AI uh and also looking at enabling the entrepreneurial ecosystem. Talk to us very briefly about how a a country enters the organization. We were chatting a bit backstage and it's, it's an application process. What are you looking for? Well, we're looking for like-minded nations that are willing to change that have the mindset of growth when it comes to betting on digital economy, and that is has the openness uh to uh welcome uh best practices from other countries and share the competitive advantage that they have with other countries. And my colleague Mihal mentioned slightly earlier about last week being a big week for the region. We have President Trump here signing multiple deals with the Middle East. Um, what does that mean for you? What do those tech-focused deals mean for the work you're doing at the DCO? Definitely this is an enabling uh opportunity uh considering that, uh, Saudi and also if we look at the region, the the, um, uh, the Gulf, um, is positioned in a very unique, uh, uh, positioning, having, um, uh, uh, very affordable and cheap energy and diversifications of also resources of energy, uh, very powerful in infrastructure when it comes to connectivity. You know, imagine that Saudi alone has 77% 5G connectivity, which is double the world's average, so that's very powerful when it comes to computing power for AI data centers and and others. Uh, third, the geographic location connecting Asia, Europe, and Africa, and last but not least, a very tech savvy youth, uh, uh, population. Um, from the Gulf, 60 million in population, more than 80% are under the age of 30, so very youthful, very tech savvy. So what does that mean is that this region is a great infrastructure for any innovative technologies going forward. And how does the organization work with the biggest governments in the world, the Americas, the European governments? What does that cooperation? Well, we, we work with them as any other countries, we. Um, we enable them with the know-how and the guidance that we have and as well as we, um, we try to connect them with our member states to get, uh, more, uh, collective, um, uh, shared best practices. Therefore, we're very much strengthening our relationship with the European Union, with ASEAN, with uh with African Union, as well as, uh, we have a great partnership with the GCC Council, Arab League and OIC. We believe that. Not only are we uh enabling our member states, but how can we enable other countries through the best practices that we have done throughout our member states. Let's continue the conversation about AI for a second. Um, AI is a world of opportunity, but at the same time it's expensive to run. It's very resource intensive to keep data centers going. How are you thinking about making sure that the widespread adoption of AI in the global north doesn't deepen the divide that we're seeing in terms of the global South, and how do we ensure that they are not only consumers of this emerging technology but also producers of it? Well, that's what keeps us up at night, really it's a, it's a huge concern that we have um we have uh we've been established to bridge that digital divide. Now we're faced with a new divide which is bigger, which is the AI divide. If we have 2.6 billion people today that are even not connected, they're not even on the internet. They don't even have devices, they're they're off the grid. So imagine how are they going to use AI. We looked at last year alone it was $300 billion investment in AI, but how many countries, a handful of countries are investing and a handful of countries are innovating. That means that there's a huge portion of the world that don't even have access to such kind of technology to create their local content. So what are you doing to help? Great question. Well, what we're trying to do is we're trying to decentralize. the capacities and the computing power, meaning that we believe that every country has its competitive advantage. There are countries that have the capabilities to create their computing power and capacities like the likes of Saudi, Kuwait, uh, uh, UAE, Qatar, and, and so on, but there are other countries that have the brain power and have the talents that can create that that local content and create these innovations. And here is where we're working first on infrastructure, creating decentralized capacities within our member states where countries around that capacity can benefit from that computing power. Second is that we're creating frameworks, new frameworks for intellectual property and also how to share the local content between the countries. And third is how to create shared pools of talents. Between the member what does that look like? That's a very interesting point. How does that happen, sharing a pool of talent? Well, um, for instance, uh, and we're just testing it here right now in, in Saudi there is since there is computing power, what we did is a program looking at AI and healthcare, for instance. So we identify a challenge and then we call out for talents from our member states. Now we have 7 scientists, one from Nigeria, one from Pakistan. One from Morocco, one from Jordan, and 3 from Saudi that come together and work on solving the solution. After they solve the solution, then we, we help in monetizing and commercializing that solution to become a company where other states like Qatar and like Kuwait are investing in in these ventures. That's really powerful. Um, we're in a room full of women who care about the future of women and girls. What are the unique challenges that come with engaging women in the digital economies in these countries that are not as well served at the moment? Um, and what can we as leaders, as business people in the room, do to help? Well, that's a, um, that's a topic that is very dear to my heart and uh it scares me when I read reports that by 2030, 350 million women will not have access to internet. That by itself is not just only a social loss but also an economical loss and this is where we really need to invest heavily and not only um upskilling women in uh in digital capabilities but also giving that access on how to use the technology because it's a learning platform as well as an economical. Platform to find jobs. So what we have done in DCO is a program called We Eleva which is to move women traditional businesses into online businesses, and that's powerful because that's direct contribution to GDP and job creation till now we supported 127 women businesses in Rwanda and now we're moving into Nigeria and and we're moving to the Middle East as well. And it came from a story if you may. I know that the time is off, but, but it's a it's a very um warming story from a woman from Apa, and I met her. She's a widow. She has 6 kids, and the thing is, she, she, her education was till high school, and she created these senses, soaps, perfumes from a distinct, uh, rose called the ha of roses. And she sells to only the the city of her life, but she wanted to expand her, her, her, her business more. So she knocked on, on, on my door once and said, Are you the Melia here? And I said, Yes. They told me you can fix my business. I want you to move me online, so we supported and helped her by creating an e-commerce solution, but that's not enough. We have to support in the financial acumen, training and marketing, payment gateways, uh, um, supply chain, delivery, and so on. Now fast forward 2 years, she's selling to 90 locations in the world, and she recruited 60 other women. And she has a revenue of roughly $100 million every year. So that's the power of just moving a women business into an online business. Secretary General, it's such important work. Thank you for telling us about it. We'll all be watching closely to see what you do next, and thank you for joining us today. Thank you for having me. Thank you.