International participants • B2B
The Dubai Expo will give participating countries a fantastic opportunity to promote their economic, trade, and investment goals and further strengthen bilateral ties.
What is the unique offer that the French Pavilion is bringing to the expo?
ERIK LINQUIER The Dubai Expo will have the highest diversity in terms of the number of participating countries. The majority of visitors will be foreign, and only a minority will come from within the UAE. That is the main challenge for us because it is difficult to create content for such a diverse audience. We have to be as demonstrative as possible in the pavilion. To that end, we will have specific spaces for B2B events. We want to show innovation in mobility, and we want to prove that France has great innovations that make cities more livable and attractive. The purpose of a city like Dubai, or other cities in the Middle East, is to make its inhabitants feel good and attract outsiders. People do not want to live in cities that only revolve around technology. In our pavilion, we will show how we can help to make cities more attractive.
How is Jordan planning to leverage on the opportunities provided by the Dubai Expo, and what are the areas for increased collaboration between Jordan and Dubai?
FAREEDON HARTOQA Jordan will participate in Expo in Dubai, where we will deliver a world class pavilion and visitor experience to showcase Jordan’s vision into the future. Under Jordan’s pavilion theme of “The Thresholds of Ingenuity,” we will share our values, unique approach to opportunity and sustainability, and our Care for People and Place. The Jordanian pavilion will act as a stage and allow Jordan to present itself to the world in a manner that develops the perception of Jordan in the mind of the international business visitor. It will be the platform to achieve economic, trade, investment, market access, and education outcomes, tourism opportunities, and has the potential to strengthen our bilateral ties with participating countries.
How has Dubai inspired the planning and execution of the French pavilion?
EL The expo is just one piece of the jigsaw in Dubai’s development. After the event, Dubai will move toward becoming a very specific new sustainable city. This means there will be a new model for Dubai, and that is a global project that is of interest for us. It is important that we participate in each and every universal and international exhibition but this one is important because it is the first in the Middle East region and is its vision is based on sustainable development. It is a focus of our government to work more on sustainability and sustainable development and to have better cities that are attractive to people and more sustainable overall. We have thought a pavilion that can be recycled, and our ambition is to go beyond that and to give a second life to our pavilion, be it in the UAE or the GCC and be it a conference center, company headquarters, or museum, for example. The second way to be sustainable is the way buildings are designed. Notably, the building will be covered by solar tiles to cover energy needs and we have a plan to reuse the wastewater. We have designed it to focus on savings in general, and especially during the first six months of operation. We want to have the operations of the pavilion as sustainable as possible.
Having signed the participation agreement in August 2019, what are the any updates regarding the Kingdom’s pavilion and the key message you wish to convey?
FH We are currently working on the design of the Jordanian Pavilion, which aims to emphasize the main objective concerning the concept design to visualize and present the significance of the moment when the idea was created as part of the theme “The Thresholds of Ingenuity.” Jordan is a small country with big ideas and achievements, has a creative and entrepreneurial people in every sector of its society and economy. Our target is to present that to the whole world, which will spend six months closely watching Dubai during the Expo as a meeting point of our entire civilization. We want to present Jordan’s vast potentials in every sector of society: economy, investment, science, agriculture, transport, culture, health, IT, tourism, and much more. In the center of it all is the Jordanian creativity and vision that lays in a free mind, in global thinking, and the mobility of ideas and skills. ✖