The Korean Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy (MOTIE) and the Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency (KOTRA) announced on March 10 that they held the Korea-UAE Future Technology Partnership Plaza in Dubai of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) for two days from March 6 to 8.
The event was held to showcase the excellence of Korean high-tech companies with the attendance of about 80 companies from both Korea and the UAE. The Korean companies conducted a total of 221 consultations about partnerships worth US$170 million.
Dubai is preparing for a new era of digital transformations. The UAE government’s services are already 99.5 percent digitally transformed and digital procurement is being actively implemented. It is also actively fostering future technologies by promoting 100 projects to build a knowledge-based economy and introducing a regulatory sandbox for testing and commercializing new technologies.
A total of 21 future technology-driven companies participated in the event, including seven companies that participated in economic diplomacy events during President Yoon’s Middle East tour in 2023.
At the event, GTWave met with a local power utility looking for solutions to reduce costs and discussed its Power over Ethernet (PoE) technology with self-recovery capabilities. Aetech, which has artificial intelligence (AI) robotics technology for sorting waste for recycling, met with UAE waste authorities to discuss technology investment collaboration. A.Virtual signed a memorandum of understanding to supply its AI-based air sterilization technology as a premium ventilation system for local commercial and residential facilities.
The MOTIE and KOTRA will continue to support Korea’s technology companies in all directions to expand their presence in the Middle East. As part of this, they will sign an MOU with the Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) of Dubai leading the introduction of innovative technologies to build future mobility infrastructure in the first half of the year to support Korean companies, which will break into the region. The future mobility infrastructure will be used as a platform for Korean companies, which will enter Dubai with technologies such as transportation infrastructure, signal systems, intelligent transportation systems, autonomous driving, and urban air mobility (UAM).