A statistic published this week deserves more attention than it will probably receive. Across the Gulf, 31.8% of young people have programming skills. Globally, the figure is just 6%.
The gap extends beyond coding. According to GCC-STAT, 61.6% of young people in GCC countries have information-verification skills, compared with 24% globally. For managing digital privacy settings, the figures are 75.9% and 34%. These aren’t small differences. They point to a generation growing up unusually comfortable with the skills that will matter in an increasingly digital economy.
For investors looking at the Gulf, this should change part of the conversation.
We tend to start with capital. In Qatar, we might also talk about energy, infrastructure and the state’s capacity to invest for the long term. All of those things matter. But I think one of Qatar’s most interesting economic assets is harder to see on a balance sheet: the investment it has made in people.
There are some things money can buy remarkably quickly. Compute can be ordered. Data centres can be financed. Investment funds can be established and international companies can be given incentives to arrive.
A workforce doesn’t work like that.
Education, technical ability, research expertise and entrepreneurial confidence accumulate over years. Institutions develop relationships. Graduates become researchers, founders, investors and experienced managers. International talent puts down roots and passes knowledge to the people around it.
Qatar has been building much of this infrastructure for decades.
Education City is perhaps the most visible example. Today, Qatar Foundation says there are around 14,200 students across its universities and schools, with eight universities located within Education City. But the more revealing number comes from the World Intellectual Property Organization.
In its 2025 Global Innovation Index, WIPO ranked Qatar joint first globally for tertiary inbound mobility, with international students accounting for 40.5% of tertiary enrolment. Qatar also ranked tenth globally on WIPO’s broader measure of tertiary education.
That matters because the movement of talent is becoming an increasingly important part of economic competition.
Countries want skilled people. Universities want the best researchers. Technology companies want engineers. Startups want founders and experienced operators. As governments compete to attract them, Qatar already has something valuable: a higher-education system with an unusually international character.
The GCC-STAT figures add another dimension.
Young people across the Gulf aren’t simply enthusiastic users of technology. On programming, information verification and digital privacy, they appear significantly ahead of global averages.
Qatar’s wider digital infrastructure gives those skills somewhere to go. WIPO ranks the country sixth globally for ICT use and seventh for ICT access. It ranks Qatar first for general infrastructure.
For the AI economy, that combination is important.
Much of the global debate about AI infrastructure still concentrates on physical capacity: chips, energy, data centres and networks. Understandably so. None of the current AI boom happens without them.
But machines don’t turn technological capability into an economy by themselves. People decide what to build with them. They identify useful problems, start companies, conduct research, make investment decisions and work out how new technology should fit into existing businesses and institutions.
Human capital is infrastructure too.
Qatar’s own plans suggest it understands the challenge.
Under the Third National Development Strategy, the country wants more than 46% of its total workforce to be employed in skilled or highly skilled jobs by 2030. It is targeting annual labour-productivity growth of 2%, while seeking to increase the share of Qataris working in the private and mixed sectors to more than 20%.
There is an international component to this as well. Qatar plans to reform its immigration system to attract more highly skilled talent, including new routes for entrepreneurs, freelancers and students.
I find that particularly interesting.
Qatar’s international workforce is sometimes discussed as a feature of its labour market. It could increasingly become a competitive advantage. A small country able to bring together people educated in Doha, experienced international professionals, researchers, founders and capital has the ingredients for something much more ambitious than a domestic technology sector.
At a time when parts of the world are becoming more economically and politically fragmented, the ability to work comfortably across borders shouldn’t be underestimated.
Qatar’s innovation foundations are already attracting international recognition.
WIPO ranks Qatar 34th globally for innovation inputs and highlights its strong performance in university-industry R&D collaboration, where it ranks tenth worldwide. These results reflect the depth of the country’s investment in education, research, infrastructure and the development of a highly skilled workforce.
The next opportunity is to build on that momentum.
Qatar has established leading universities. It has attracted international students and researchers. It has excellent digital and physical infrastructure, substantial investment capacity and a young population developing unusually strong digital skills.
Together, these strengths create an exceptional platform for the next phase of growth.
The possibilities are significant. More research can become businesses. More graduates can become founders. International talent can help develop local companies and institutions. Investors can identify promising ideas in Qatar at an earlier stage and help them scale internationally.
This is where Qatar’s institutions, investors, universities, companies and government can create even greater value by working together.
There are already encouraging signs of this progress. Qatar’s tenth-place global ranking for university-industry R&D collaboration reflects the strength of the relationships connecting research, business and the wider economy.
With such a strong foundation in place, Qatar is well positioned to translate its investment in people, knowledge and infrastructure into a new generation of companies, technologies and economic opportunities.
For investors, this changes how Qatar should be assessed.
Its financial resources remain an extraordinary advantage, but they aren’t the whole story. Alongside them sits an education and research ecosystem built over decades, strong digital infrastructure, an unusually international talent base and a national strategy explicitly focused on increasing skills and productivity.
The GCC-STAT numbers offer a glimpse of the generation coming through that system. A region in which almost a third of young people already report programming skills, compared with 6% globally, starts the next phase of technological change from an interesting position.
Qatar has spent decades investing in its people. The question now isn’t whether that investment exists. It’s how much economic value can be created from it.
For those of us interested in the businesses, technologies and entrepreneurs that will shape the Gulf’s next economy, that’s a question worth watching closely.
Nicole Junkermann is an international entrepreneur and investor and the founder of NJF Holdings. Through NJF Capital and the wider NJF Holdings investment platform, she has invested in technology businesses across artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, healthtech and other areas of emerging technology. Her Human Code framework explores how technological progress can strengthen human capability, resilience and agency.