Reinvention is the secret to the UAE’s great success

After years of being asked what the UAE makes, Peter Hatherley-Greene arrives at an unexpected conclusion.

Dubai is known for its ultramodern skyline, but what does it make? Razan Alzayani / Bloomberg

In many conversations during trips home to New Zealand or abroad in some exotic destination, when someone learns that I live in Dubai I find myself fielding a familiar question: “What does the UAE make?”

Most people incorrectly think Dubai still has oil offshore in the Arabian Gulf or onshore under the desert sands, with see-sawing pump jacks drawing oil up from deep underground to an awaiting fleet of supertankers. Dubai’s oil production peaked in 1991 and has been declining steadily since.

In comparison to Abu Dhabi’s onshore oil production of about 1.6 million barrels a day, Dubai’s Margham Field produces 25,000 barrels per day.

Sheikh Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum, the father of Sheikh Mohammed, the current Ruler of Dubai and Vice President of the UAE, understood the transience of the wealth gained from oil.

Sheikh Rashid’s famous quote – “My grandfather rode a camel, my father rode a camel, I drive a Mercedes, my son drives a Land Rover, his son will drive a Land Rover, but his son will ride a camel” – reflected his concern that Dubai’s oil would run out within a few generations – and that there would be little to show for it.

As a result, he wisely spent the revenue from the best productive oil years on creating the future of Dubai in diversified projects such as dredging and widening of Dubai Creek (early 1970s), and building Port Rashid (1972), Al Shindagha Tunnel (1975), Jebel Ali Port (1979), Dubai World Trade Centre (1978) and the Dubai Drydocks (1983).

The UAE as a whole is diversifying its economy towards a post-oil era. But right now, if we put aside oil exports, the question of what the UAE makes is a difficult one to answer.

The early history of what was to become the UAE was centred on trading activities and routes that linked the area to the entire Arabian Gulf, India, Sri Lanka and the east coast of Africa as far south as Mozambique. Enjoying the benefits of a central crossroads between the three continents of Europe, Africa and Asia, the people of this region not only survived the harsh climatic conditions but also thrived to the point where in the early 20th century, 69 per cent of the 10,000 people then living in Dubai were engaged in pearling.

After the collapse of the pearling industry in the 1930s because of the production of cultured pearls in Japan, the Trucial States experienced some very difficult years right up to the discovery of commercial quantities of oil in the 1950s.

Today, through significant investment in the industrial and tourism sectors, air and maritime transportation, real estate, import and re-export as well as through supporting activities based on the knowledge economy, the UAE now plans to aggressively increase the contribution of the non-oil sector to 80 per cent of the nation’s gross domestic product in the next 10 to 15 years.

Its people have transformed the desert into a peaceful and secure oasis which attracts millions of visitors and workers from everywhere. From the 1960s, when expatriates comprised less than 10 per cent of the total population, to 2016, when that percentage now applies to Emiratis, the UAE has always been a welcoming host.

Despite its struggle to maintain its national identity in the face of overwhelming numbers of expatriates and other effects of globalisation, the UAE continues to open, not shut, its doors, making it one of the most competitive and open markets in the world economy.

It has not always been smooth sailing and there have been mistakes along the way.

And so now when I am asked what does the UAE make, I think about my own situation, having spent more than two decades here during some of the most tumultuous years of cultural and landscape change ever experienced by a society in modern times.

For me, it provided work and a home for my family, and it has enabled us to travel the globe. By offering me and millions of other workers the opportunity to come here in the search of a better life, it has created hope for a better future.

What does the UAE make? In short, it makes dreams.

Dr Peter J Hatherley-Greene is director of learning at Emarise