DOHA: Qatar and Sweden is set to establish a strategic partnership to offer Qatar tailor-made solutions for innovation and entrepreneurship development. This will help Qatar in transforming its energy-rich economy into a knowledge-based society.
“Qatar and Sweden can do a lot together to help Qatar achieve its objective of diversifying the economy. We are going to establish a partnership to offer tailor-made solutions to promote innovation and entrepreneurship in Qatar”, the Swedish Ambassador to Qatar, Ewa Polano, told The Peninsula yesterday.
“The national innovation system that we are going to develop will have all that it takes to have a ‘triple-helix’ approach between the government, local universities and the private sector,” she added while speaking on the sidelines of the 3rd Entrepreneurship in Economic Development Forum that kicked off yesterday at Sheraton Doha Resort and Convention Hotel.
The Swedish envoy highlighted that hundred years of Sweden’s successful entrepreneurship development stories will work as a great role model in the paradigm shift that Qatar is witnessing as part of efforts to diversifying its economy.
“We are small nation but we have a lot of Swedish companies such as Ikea and many others that are active around the world. Some of the Swedish innovations include refrigerator, tetra pack, ATM, Skype, Bluetooth among others,” Ewa added. “Through this partnership proposal, which is currently on the table, we are going to offer Qatar an education for national administrators, for people from government, universities and the private sector.”
She also noted that despite global economic recession and dwindling oil prices Qatar is still a very rich country, but it needs to encourage the youth towards entrepreneurship. “I believe the smart young Qataris will take the advantage of the digital (ICT) revolution and the massive support offered by the government and its visionary leadership.”
She said that Qatar has already taken a lot positive steps and doing things in the right direction, however, Sweden can offer more in the field of education, healthcare, sports, medical tourism and others for mutual benefits. The ambassador also announced that a delegation from Sweden’s Lund University, the biggest varsity in Scandinavia, will be visiting Qatar next week (Monday) as part of its ongoing partnership development.
The members of the delegation is expected to meet top government officials, including the Ministry of Economy and Commerce, Qatar University and QCB and expected to sign agreements for bilateral cooperation.
It will be the follow up visit after the Swedish Minister for Higher Education and Research Helene Hellmark Knutsson who concluded his three-day official visit to Qatar recently. She and her accompanying delegation discussed cooperation with Qatar in higher education and research.
Knutsson was accompanied by a delegation of 21 high-level representatives from Swedish top universities such as Karolinska Institute, Lund University, Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Chalmers University, and presidents of several national agencies for higher education and research.
