The Ministry of Economy (MoE), represented by The Entrepreneurial Nation and Amazon Web Services, launched the AWS Connected Community initiative to support the digitization of SMEs in the UAE. It is designed to accelerate the growth and expansion of SMEs in local and international markets, in line with global best practices.
H.E. Abdullah Ahmed Al Saleh, Undersecretary of the Ministry of Economy, explained that the Ministry has been supporting the UAE’s efforts to develop an integrated entrepreneurship and SMEs ecosystem. In this regard, the Ministry has been provisioning more incentives, initiatives and support programs to enable entrepreneurs to grow and expand their businesses and activities in regional and global markets, thus solidifying the UAE’s status as the number one global destination for entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial projects.
The Undersecretary noted that the cooperation with Amazon Web Services opens up new growth avenues for SMEs by accelerating their digital transformation and enabling them to benefit from more than 200 technological and digital services offered by the AWS platform.
Yasser Hassan, general manager, commercial sector at Amazon Web Services Middle East, Africa and Turkey, said: “We are pleased to partner with the UAE Ministry of Economy for this initiative, through which we aim to provide support to SMEs and entrepreneurs and enable them to gain experiences and new and diverse skills that prepare them for the digital future and accelerate the pace of growth and innovation. Over the past years, the UAE has succeeded in creating an ideal and conducive environment for the growth of SMEs to become an attractive destination for entrepreneurs wishing to establish businesses.”
“It is Amazon Web Services' mission to address the challenges faced by budding entrepreneurs and SME-owners by providing them with the latest solutions, services and cloud technologies from our wide and diversified portfolio of services. In today’s digital era, companies of all sizes must focus on upskilling their workforce and adopting cloud computing technologies,” he added.
The AWS Connected Community initiative will conduct a set of sessions and virtual workshops for entrepreneurs and SMEs to enhance their capabilities in the areas of innovation as well as the digital economy and technology. These include cloud computing, smart applications and solutions, digital media, IoT, robots, blockchain, storage and digital databases. Led by several leading experts and investors in entrepreneurship, the sessions will also provide an integrated set of incentives for online payments to participating SMEs.
This digital initiative is part of the ScaleUp platform, one of the three main tracks of The Entrepreneurship Nation, which offers support to SMEs in the UAE through services and products designed specifically to accelerate the expansion of local companies into global ones.
