Tomorrow was made at Qatar Foundation – that is how HH Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, Chairperson of Qatar Foundation (QF), summed up the impact of the organisation on a nation, as its very first days were revisited by people who were instrumental in turning the vision into reality during a special panel discussion aired on Qatar TV on the occasion of QF’s 25th anniversary.

The Untold Stories of Qatar Foundation saw Her Highness, who envisioned and founded QF in 1995 with the support of HH the Father Amir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, gave unprecedented insight into why QF was established and the belief that made it happen.

Joined by the central figures in QF’s establishment 26 years ago, the panel recounted the plans, challenges, goals, and milestones that lined the path to creating a globally unique ecosystem of education, science and research, and community development.

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Tomorrow was made at Qatar Foundation

Our belief in the success of Qatar Foundation as a project was deep-rooted, despite the challenges and curves that we faced at the beginning of our journey more than 25 years ago, she shared.

In 2005, on the day Education City opened, we promised that tomorrow would be here. And, indeed, tomorrow was made at Qatar Foundation.

HH Sheikha Moza said they never looked at the projects, centres and initiatives as being there to serve a specific geographical area, and instead thought of it as (an) Arab-Islamic renaissance project, based in Qatar, to promote sustainable development in the Arab world, by creating positive change from an academic, research and societal perspective.

Her Highness spoke of how QF’s first school, Qatar Academy – established in 1996 – was born of two dimensions. The first came from her role as a mother who had concerns about the education of her children; and the second was national, reflected by her role in the development of society.

At the time, I realised we were facing a national challenge related to education, and we needed to make a radical change in the educational system by providing advanced, quality education – based on the logical analysis and rational deduction that were central to previous Arab civilisations and applied in Western civilisations, while at the same time preserving our heritage, language, and national identity.

She said that the Qatar Academy project grew and developed, and it was necessary to continue the progress by building the components of higher education and a culture of scientific research, in order to support the development of the community.

Education City 1

As Her Highness explained during The Untold Stories of Qatar Foundation, it was originally planned to establish a single university at QF. She, however, asked about the effectiveness of repeating experiments that had not succeeded in many societies.

She said they recognised that every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end, so they started to attract prestigious international universities to Qatar according to the disciplines that met national needs, in order to provide an ecosystem based on creativity and innovation, which enables them to cultivate, localise and reproduce knowledge.

She also shared that one of the challenges they faced during the negotiations with international universities was their questions about the academic level of the students. But their belief in human capabilities in Qatar and the Arab region was solid.

We knew that if these young people were given the right educational environment and the right opportunities, the world would witness their achievements. And that is what we see today.

Another challenge facing QF as it evolved, according to Her Highness, was building a culture of scientific research in Qatar. But she said they believe that innovation is the basis of the philosophy of Qatar Foundation.

HH Sheikha Moza wanted Qatar Foundation to be an incubator for scientists, researchers and innovators across the Arab world and even worldwide because they recognise that scientific research continues as long as human life continues.

Untold Stories

Among the key figures in the establishment of Qatar Foundation who also spoke during the panel discussion was former Minister of Economy and Finance, HE Yousef Hussain Kamal. The former official said that successful economic models were built in many developed countries, such as Japan and Singapore, and they do not have natural resources, but was invested in minds.

He said that nurturing engineers, physicians, diplomats, and others at Education City was a successful investment idea designed to support the goal of economic development, instead of having a reliance on scholarships abroad for knowledge acquisition. What was needed, he said, was to produce knowledge.

HE Dr Ibrahim Al Ibrahim explained how the model of the ecosystem we looked to build did not exist anywhere else in the world at that time.

This increased the challenges and difficulties, as our goal was to attract international universities based on their excellence in the majors we needed – especially the oil and gas industry – to support the development of Qatar.

HE Dr Al Ibrahim said they worked hard to assess the strengths of each university, according to perspectives and needs, and they were able to achieve what they aspired to achieve.

The discussion also heard from HE Dr Sheikha Abdulla Al-Misnad who said that the QF project, with all its aspirations, was new for them and for the world. She said there were tensions in the beginning, which was normal when starting a project of such scale.

Built on solid pillars

During the programme, Dr Saif Ali Al-Hajri emphasised that from its inception, QF was built on solid pillars as national identity, supporting the ambitions of children and the aspirations of their families and achieving a balance between openness based on global experiences while still preserving the country’s heritage and values.

In a specially recorded video message, former QF president Dr Fathy Saoud said they tirelessly knocked on doors during the negotiations with the most prestigious international universities. And they succeeded. They reached the day when the doors of QF were being knocked upon by well-known international universities keen to establish partnerships with Qatar.

The QSTP Building

Engineer Abdul Redha Abdul Rahman shared how the idea for Qatar Science and Technology Park came to be – the recognition that sustainability of education requires the existence of scientific and technological research.

At the same time, he said that social development requires a culture of scientific research and the spread of innovation and creativity.

So research, development and innovation became the third part of what I call the Qatar Foundation triangle, inseparable from education and community development.


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