AIWF President & Founder Haifa Al Kaylani was delighted to participate on a key panel of the Arab-British Chamber of Commerce‘s flagship annual event, the Arab British Economic Summit #ABES2022, held in London on 02 November 2022. Haifa is also a proud Board Member of the ABCC.
For the session ‘Innovate Education’, she joined inspiring speakers Imran Zawwar, PhD from Cranfield University, Francois Ortalo-Magne, Dean of London Business School, Professor Mohamed Loutfi, President and Vice Chancellor of The British University in Egypt, and the Rt Hon Charles Clarke, Former Secretary of State for Education, to discuss salient issues around innovating and investing in education, and the future of work and skills in the MENA region.
As Haifa shared in her keynote, “there is an urgent need for economies to skill, upskill, and reskill their workers to adequately prepare them for the workforce of the future, and to equip workers to succeed in the careers where the jobs of the future are being created – and largely, in the digital economy. I believe that it is time to consider a new dimension toward sustainable growth placing the Arab region as the hub of excellence and education as well as being the driver for change.”
The issues discussed at the ABES 2022 are also at the heart of the human-centred agenda of the ILO Global Commission on the Future of Work, on which Haifa is proud to have served as the only Commissioner from the Arab World. The ILO’s key priorities to align economic policy with Future of Work solutions centre on lifelong learning, continuous education, skilling, adaptability, and flexibility, in order to guarantee an inclusive, multigenerational, just and equitable future labour market.
The Board of AIWF extends its warm thanks and appreciation to the Arab-British Chamber of Commerce for a most successful summit and to all valued stakeholders who participated in the highly energising and discussions on November 2nd, which spanned the need to reboot Arab trade to fintech and climate action in the region.
There is great value in coming together, as we did at ABES 2022, to create valuable and much-needed momentum on critical economic and development priorities for the Arab world, and AIWF were proud to be a part of the conversation.
