The UAE’s ambition to build a knowledge-based economy has been ingrained into all our minds. But establishing this knowledge economy will not happen without investing in the training and skills development sector. Education is the backbone of what the UAE is trying to achieve on all fronts, and educational opportunities need to be diverse to meet market needs and address the current gap in skills.

With Expo 2020 around the corner, and the UAE government’s sights firmly on becoming a regional and international hub for the Islamic Economy, industries will continue to grow rapidly to cater to this growth. Creating a skilled and reliable workforce is where education needs to play a significant role. Education needs to indulge the sectors contributing to the economy.

Take the Islamic economy agenda, for example. A study by Thomson Reuters found Dubai’s Islamic market has a potential value of $6.7 trillion, bigger than both the US and China. A Workforce Planning Study launched by Dubai International Academic City in partnership with Deloitte revealed that dedicated Islamic banking skills are in high demand from GCC banks, particularly at the entry level, closely followed by financial risk management and customer segmentation and analytics skills. So, it is essential we work closely with both academic providers and the industry to bridge the gap between the two to build a workforce with the necessary skills to support this booming sector.

The good news is that we have the manpower — close to 50 per cent of the population in the UAE is under the age of 25 years — so it’s simply a case of providing these students with the right platform, access to world-class programmes, and enabling them to develop into the functioning workforce we need to move forward as a leading economy.

With the next generation of business leaders undeniably younger than before, the need to bridge the education-workforce gap is at the forefront of the UAE’s agenda. The Workforce Planning Study showed that the GCC’s growing education sector is expected to have a manpower gap of 200,000 by 2015. If that doesn’t punctuate the matter at hand, I’m not sure what will.

But while this might all sound rather negative, it’s important we do not forget how far this country has come in the past 43 years. The UAE is currently ranked the fourth most attractive education destination in the world in the Workforce Planning study. To transform from the fishing village of our ancestors into a burgeoning city with schools to cater to every nationality, syllabus and language is an incredible achievement and one that we should be proud of. The study also showed that private sector enrolment in the UAE is valued at $2.8 billion and growing at 10 per cent, making it one of the largest education sectors in the GCC.

The UAE placed sixth for higher education and training in the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Rankings 2014-15, ahead of both the US and the UK, a position that could not have been achieved were it not for the increasing number of world-class educational institutions that have chosen the UAE to expand internationally — Manipal University, BITS Pilani, Manchester Business School, and French Fashion University to name a few.

Nine DIAC-based universities were recognised in the recent global Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) University Rankings, with five of them (Exeter, Michigan State University, Saint-Petersburg, University of Wollongong, and Heriot-Watt) sitting in the top 500 — an impressive feat, and one that will undoubtedly continue to improve with time.

Also worth noting is a recent report by QS that showed that global transnational education (TNE) students are increasingly seeing Dubai as a global higher education hub akin to the US, UK, Australia and Canada. If we are already being compared on a level with some of the most established economies in the world, we must be doing something right.

Education is the keystone to bridging the gap between the increasingly young talent pool and growing industry excellence, on our nation’s continued quest to establish itself as a leading knowledge-based economy. It is the primary building block for the next generation’s development and the best possible means of nurturing the leaders of tomorrow.

I am proud of how far we have come and its offerings so far, and am excited to see what the future holds for Dubai’s increasingly diverse education sector.

The writer is the Managing Director of the Education Cluster of TECOM Investments, a member of Dubai Holding.