UAE offers citizenship, Golden Visa to attract the best talent, says top official

Now, attracting talent to the UAE has become much easier than a few years ago, a senior official said at the Gitex Global on Monday. This is because the country has built an ecosystem and a host of new initiatives such as long-term residency like Golden Visas and citizenship to talented people.

“There are a number of talented people that were given Golden Visa and there are a number of them that became UAE citizens,” stated Faisal Al Bannai, Secretary-General of the Advanced Technology Research Council (ATRC) and advisor to the UAE President.

“At ATRC, there are 10 research centres and over 1,300 researchers from 70 countries based in the UAE. Combined that with all the other companies in the technology areas like G42 and Edge, all of them are bringing talent to the country," Al Bannai said during a fireside chat on the topic of AI Leadership: Steering Societal Transformation at Gitex Global on Monday.

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“It was not easy to attract talent about four or five years ago. Today, it is much easier because we have an ecosystem and projects that attract talent," he added.

The UAE has introduced several long-term residency initiatives such as 10-year visas, and 5-year visas for investors, students, professionals, entrepreneurs and others to attract the best talent and capital from around the world. So far, Dubai has awarded a 10-year Golden Visa to thousands of people in the emirate since it was rolled out before the pandemic.

Faisal also stressed that the UAE is moving to the knowledge economy.

“UAE is taking a partnership approach to collaborate with the best players and invest in future technologies. We are also building our own technologies that are sovereign to us and that we control. I think AI is something we can’t miss. We definitely want to be in the driver's seat when it comes to AI.”

Faisal noted that in a few year's time, AI will start making decisions on basic topics on behalf of the people such as basic planning, routing of networks, basic works in hospitality and fixing appointments.

“There are many layers of decision-making that people will start relegating to AI in 3 to 5 years.”

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