Qatar Tackles Digital Economy with New Meta Link

New cooperation with Meta, the former Facebook, is expected to lead to a digital transformation of Qatar's entrepreneurial ecosystem.

An agreement for collaboration between Qatar and Facebook's parent corporation Meta was inked on Wednesday in an endeavor to make Qatar a digitally-enabled economy.

The Ministry of Communications and Information Technology of Qatar and Meta will collaborate to support the digital transformation of Qatar's small and medium-sized businesses.

According to Qatar News Agency, the ministry wants to foster a human-centric view of the digital economy and society by "making digital transformation a truly inclusive and transformative process for all organizations."

For these companies, Meta has established a virtual hub in the Gulf nation with digital marketing training webinars.

The information offered will include instructions on how to use Meta Business Suite, get started with Instagram, become creative with advertisements, and reach an audience with tailored ads, among other things.

Reem Al Mansoori, Assistant Undersecretary of Digital Society Development at the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, said, "The strategic partnership with Meta will supplement and enhance Qatar's efforts in supporting our small and medium enterprises in their digital transformation journeys, which is exceedingly important for the economic and social development of the country."

Are commercial texts deemed to be an invasion of privacy?

The Sports Accelerator, Aspire Zone Foundation, Qatar Science and Technology Park, Qatar Financial Center, and Qatar Development Bank are the program's Qatar-based partners (QDB).

Qatar is making a steady shift to a service-based economy.

Statistics show that in 2011, the contribution of industry to GDP was 73.21 percent, while the contribution of services was 28.56 percent. Industry made up 52.33 percent of the economy in 2020, while services made up 52.74 percent.

According to acting QDB CEO Abdulrahman Hesham Al Suwaidi, "Our relationship with Meta is in accordance with the digital transformation aspirations conducted by QDB, especially now that we have accelerated our digital solutions and e-commerce operations on a wider level due to the COVID-19 outbreak."

The partnership, however, comes as Meta faces criticism for its direct involvement in disclosing user information to businesses in exchange for money.

Problematic part of Meta

In April 2018, CEO Mark Zuckerberg of the company formerly known as Facebook opened his congressional investigation with a public apology for a privacy crisis that had enraged social media users.

In his opening remarks before the Senate Commerce and Judiciary committees, he accepted responsibility for his company's failure to stop Cambridge Analytica, a data-mining company connected to Donald Trump's presidential campaign, from attempting to influence the 2016 US presidential elections by obtaining personal information from 87 million users.

Additionally, Zuckerberg was reluctant to discuss how Russian-backed individuals exploited his platform to influence the outcome of the election.

According to the New York Times, the media behemoth has given other digital companies including Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Netflix, and Spotify access to customer data.