The Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Knowledge Foundation (MBRF), under the patronage of its Chairman, His Highness H.H. Sheikh Ahmed bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, is preparing to publish the findings of the Global Knowledge Index for 2018, which was developed in collaboration with the United Nations Development Program (UNDP).
The results of the index will be announced during this year’s Knowledge Summit, which is being organised by MBRF on a yearly basis, and will take place in Dubai on December 5-6, 2018. The summit’s theme for this year is ‘Youth and the Future of the Knowledge Economy,’ with the annual event now established as an international platform for global knowledge leaders, experts, and decision-makers to discuss and exchange expertise and experiencesin the field of knowledge production and dissemination.
Through the Global Knowledge Index -a part of the Arab Knowledge Project -the foundation and UNDP seek to provide an accurate and objective tool that monitors the state of knowledge in the world, as well as opportunities and challenges around knowledge acquisition. It aims to provide a qualitative analysis of global knowledge tosupportgovernments and stakeholders assess performance and create development plans in a variety of fields.
“The global Knowledge Index is a vital tool to support sustainable development plans, regionally and globally. In partnership with UNDP, we have intensified our efforts to introduce the index and publish its findings, which reveal the depth of the relationship between knowledge and development in most regions of the world. The results were presented in a series of specialised events that have generated great interest by governments and knowledge entities in a number of countries,” said His Excellency Jamal bin Huwaireb, CEO of MBRF.
“We have seen how countries seek to benefit from the outputs of the index and how they use them to adopt the approach of change and development, which prompted us to expand the circle of beneficiaries to incorporate more countries, including Arab countries. We also commenced communication with institutions and knowledge centresaround the world to identify the views and ideas of global communities,so that countries canemploy these in their sustainable development plans,” he added.
Dr. Hany Torky, the Chief Technical Advisor of the Arab Knowledge Project, explained that the Global Knowledge Index team comprises a group of experts and international organisations, who are currently working on analyzing the results of the 2017 index, which was derived from information collected from 131 countries. Concurrently they are collecting data from 195 countries for the 2018 index to increase the number of countries within the indexand to keep pace with the rapid changes in global databases.
Dr. Torkypointed out that the Global Knowledge Index team is consolidating the objectives of the indicator, most notably communicating directly with statistical centres and ministries of education worldwide to provide them with the results of the index. In parallel, the core teamis working with international contacts to identify the weaknesses in the indicators of each country and hence help the relevant bodies address and improve them, thereby enabling them to develop their respective societies. In addition, contact was made with competent authorities in the countries that are top ranked on the index to discuss their experiences in achieving knowledge society, aiming toapply them in the Arab region.
The Global Knowledge Index is composed ofsixsectoral indicators: (1) pre-university education, (2) technical vocational education and training, (3) higher education, (4) research, development and innovation (RDI), (5) information and communication technology (ICT),and (6) economics;in addition to a seventh supporting index(7) general enabling environment. The GKI is the first index that attempts to measure the long-term conditions that affect the potential of citizens to participate in civil society.
Last year’s Global Knowledge Index was the first of its kind, covering131 countries selected according to the availability of reliable data at the level of basic variables. The indicatorsmechanism in each annual index is supervised by an advisory committee that includes international experts from leading international research organisations and centres.