IBM Blockchain: How Dubai is Becoming the Blockchain Capital of the World

IBM Blockchain: How Dubai is Becoming the Blockchain Capital of the World

A Q&A with Anthony Butler, Chief Technology Officer and Leader of IBM's Blockchain Services in the Middle East and Africa

In the fall of 2016, the government of Dubai announced an ambitious plan to implement blockchain for all government documents, aiming to create the world’s first fully digitized government by 2021.

That same year, the Global Blockchain Council was established, comprising government agencies, banks, and technology firms. Its goal was to implement and scale a technology that was then still in its infancy.

Since then, Dubai has launched various groundbreaking blockchain projects, exploring innovative applications across sectors such as transportation, healthcare, municipal services, and education. This week, Dubai celebrates a new milestone with the announcement of a joint initiative with IBM and Smart Dubai: the first government-approved blockchain in the Middle East.

To learn more about this achievement and Dubai’s plans to further develop blockchain, we spoke with Anthony Butler, Chief Technology Officer and Leader of IBM’s Blockchain Services in the Middle East and Africa.

How did this project come about?
The project began when Dubai established the Global Blockchain Council to unite the public and private sectors and explore how blockchain could be applied. This led to the creation of the Dubai Blockchain Strategy, built on three pillars:

1. Using blockchain to improve government efficiency.
2. Positioning Dubai as a global leader in blockchain.
3. Supporting the development of new industries based on blockchain.

In 2017, IBM was appointed as a strategic partner by Smart Dubai to identify valuable use cases where blockchain could make a significant impact.

How did you select use cases suitable for blockchain?
Blockchain allows us to solve network problems that cannot be addressed using traditional databases or other technologies. A network problem involves multiple parties who may not fully trust each other. For instance, government processes involving both public and private entities, or supply chains with competing organizations. Blockchain acts as an operating system for trust in such situations.

IBM has completed over 500 blockchain projects globally, including many in the region, which has helped us identify effective use cases across various industries. For Dubai, we examined the entire government to uncover opportunities. This resulted in several high-value use cases that align with the city’s overarching vision.

Why is blockchain useful in these scenarios?
Blockchain provides a shared and distributed ledger with characteristics such as immutability, consensus, provenance, and finality, ensuring participants can trust the system. Instead of each participant maintaining separate records, blockchain allows everyone to access and update a single ledger. This reduces paperwork, minimizes reconciliation time, resolves disputes faster, and decreases reliance on third parties to mediate conflicts.

Has IBM developed specific applications for Dubai?
A good example is our work with Dubai’s Department of Economic Development. Dubai has several “free zones” that function as independent jurisdictions with their own licensing rules and regulations for business registration. Companies can operate on the mainland or within these zones, which cater to different purposes and rules.

This created a need for a unified, centralized view across all jurisdictions. We addressed this with a blockchain-based registry that allows free zones and the mainland to share information on registered companies and their structures.

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