In April, Dubai will receive the teams that will compete in the Global Management Challenge 2017.
From April 16 to 18 Dubai will be hosting the international final of the 2017 edition of the Global Management Challenge. In all, students, executives and mixed teams (students and executives) from 23 countries and four continents will compete for the title.
From Europe and Asia, in addition to Portugal, who is sending a mixed team, Estonia, the Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia, Spain, Greece, Russia, Hong Kong, India, China and Macao will all be present.
From the Middle East and Africa, Kenya, Angola, Kuwait, Nigeria, Senegal and the host country the United Arab Emirates (UAE) will be competing. From the American continent there will be teams from Brazil, Mexico and Panama. Two more countries are still to be confirmed: Cape Verde and Romania.
The Global Management Challenge ran its first edition in Portugal in 1980 and was launched internationally a year later. It is now present in more than 30 countries, but not all of these countries are competing at this worldwide event.
International finals always take place the year after the national finals so that countries from different geographies can have time to elect their champion.
In recent years the Middle East has been one of the regions in which the competition has been expanding. Kuwait in 2012 was the first country from this part of the world to join and a year later the UAE saw its first own edition with just over 60 teams. By 2017 that number had already jumped to 223 and only in the beginning of April will the winner of that edition be chosen to represent the host country.
Afra Al Mezaina was part of the UAE team of four students who competed in the 2016 international final. “The test allowed us to experience the different relationships that exist between the functional areas of a company, which is something we only study in the theory”, he says. His teammate, Ohood Ahmad Bakhit, emphasizes the opportunity to make decisions, work with numbers and live an international experience.
As winners in their own country, they received a trip to Tokyo to experience the Japanese culture and business world, offered by the main sponsor of the event in the UAE.
