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When the Dubai Knowledge Village (DKV), part of Tecom investments, was founded in 2003, the concept of a knowledge-based economy was in a fledgling state. This year on October 2, when DKV celebrated its 10th anniversary, it proved beyond all doubt that creation of a education free zone was the need of the hour.

Originally conceived to cater to the training and development needs of growing free zone industries in the Middle East, DKV has grown exponentially in the past decade, covering all human resource management functions such as HR consultancy, executive search and training and development.


Just last year, DKV witnessed a 24 per cent growth as a further 80 HR institutes signed up to the business park. Today, with more than 500 business partners, and 57,000 graduations behind it, it has become a beacon of knowledge in the region and a thriving nerve centre of education, training and the creation of human capital for UAE industries.

Both Dr Abdullah Al Karam, Chairman of the Board of Directors and Director General of the KHDA, and Dr Ayoub Kazim, Managing Director of Dubai Knowledge Village, delivered key note speeches to an audience of key industry players, representatives from the UAE government and DKV’s business partners.

The evolution of human resources

In his keynote address, Dr Kazim expressed his gratitude to the business partners who have worked in tandem with the goals of DKC.

He said: “Thanks to the hard work of our colleagues and business partners over the past 10 years, we have managed to build what remains to be the world’s first free zone dedicated to human resource development, executive search and professional training and development.

“One of the key reasons for the success of DKV has been the synergy between the stakeholders there. However, the paradigm shift in the role of HR since the last decade has also played an important role. In the last decade, human resources has shifted from being an arm with support function to becoming a fully integrated, primary component of successful business.”

Dr Kazim reiterated this point. “Today, HR plays a major role and is much stronger in businesses as companies seek to restructure and optimise productivity. Why many companies that start on a good note falter is over lack of successful planning, leadership and development.

“Changing workforce demographics and global talent trends require companies to be increasingly strategic and analytical about how they recruit, engage, deploy and retain their staff.

“Successful businesses now see effective human resource management as a business imperative and Dubai Knowledge Village has become a one-stop-shop for this.

“Now we are reviewing the university courses and are concentrating on the quality and not quantity of programmes.

“Are they meeting the expectations of the corporates and the markets? We continuously monitor that and conduct our research and surveys to gauge the progress because we want to guide our partners towards the right kind of programmes that will bridge the gap between industry and academia.”

There are at present, he says, huge gaps between industry expectations and academic courses. “Hopefully, in the next 10 to 15 years, we might be successful in narrowing or even closing this gap if we continue to work in this manner. Our economy is getting to be very diversified and we need our knowledge partners to work towards catering to the demands of a diversified ecnonmy.”

Supporting educational tourism

Looking at the long-term goals of DKV, Dr Al Karam lauded the milestones achieved. “In the last 10 years, we proved with DKV that branch campuses are viable and sustainable business model. This concept of a free zone in education is here to stay.

“Our next goal is to contribute to the government’s target of getting 20 million tourists to the UAE by 2020. For that, we need to diversify the tourism portfolio and rethink on the areas of tourism that need to be developed.

“Education tourism is an important sector to be developed where we can attract young talent from around the world and add to the growing student body as well as have highly skilled professionals. We need to build a strong foundation.”

DKV today

Over the past 10 years, a number of government, semi-government and private sector firms have benefited from DKV’s business partner services, including: Emirates Airline; Sharjah Centre for Cultural Communications; Bosch Middle East; DP World; Majid Al Futtaim; InterContinental Hotel Group; and Prestigious Group.

DKV business partners enjoy such free zone benefits as 100 per cent foreign ownership, 100 per cent tax-free operations, 100 per cent repatriation of profits and effortless visa and licensing issuance procedures.

In addition, DKV provides a dedicated Partner Development Team to ensure the on-going visibility and growth of partners through a number of initiatives.

By Suchitra Bajpai Chaudhary, Education Writer

Page last updated 01 January 2020