Duqm Summer Series 2026 Opens With a Session on AI at Work

Starting Sunday, August 23, the Special Economic Zone at Duqm (SEZAD) will open its 2026 Duqm Summer Series with a session dedicated entirely to artificial intelligence and robotics in the workplace, a rare instance of an Omani economic zone authority using its own convening power to run an AI-literacy programme for the local workforce rather than simply hosting a one-off conference.

🔑 Key Takeaways

• SEZAD's first-ever Duqm Summer Series, titled "Women Leading Change," runs three evenings from August 23 to 25, 2026 at the Crowne Plaza Duqm, according to Oman Observer.
• The opening session, "Intelligent Machines," examines how AI and robotics are reshaping jobs and is led by four Omani women working in computer science, data and AI: Dr. Fatima Al Raisi of Sultan Qaboos University, Amna Al Sinani of Future Data, Beylasan Al Ruzaiqi of Onsor, and Dr. Aziza Al Zadjali of Star Labs.
• Twelve Omani women from business, government and academia are speaking across the three nights, as Times of Oman reported on August 8, with organisations including Sultan Qaboos University, the Royal Academy of Management, the Development Bank, Sohar International Bank, SalamAir, OQ8 and OPAZ represented.
• The programme grew directly out of the SEZAD-SQU Summer Internship Programme, according to an interview with organiser Hanan Al Siyabi published by The Arabian Stories on July 29.
• Attendance is open to women working in and around Duqm, and elsewhere in Oman, according to SEZAD.

🤖 What SEZAD Actually Announced

SEZAD, the government authority responsible for developing the Special Economic Zone at Duqm under Oman's Public Authority for Special Economic Zones and Free Zones (OPAZ), confirmed the full speaker lineup for its "Intelligent Machines" session in an update reported by Oman Observer on August 16. The session opens at 7:30pm on Sunday, August 23 at the Crowne Plaza Duqm and brings together four women currently working inside Oman's AI and data ecosystem: an academic from Sultan Qaboos University's Department of Computer Science, and founders or leads from three Omani technology companies, Future Data, Onsor and Star Labs.

That is a concrete step up from the initial announcement. When SEZAD first previewed the series and Times of Oman covered it on August 8, the three evening topics, "Intelligent Machines," "Leading Without a Playbook" and "The Business of Culture," were named but the full speaker roster had not yet been confirmed publicly. The August 16 update is the first time SEZAD has put named individuals and their employers against the AI session, giving the public a verifiable list of who is actually presenting rather than a generic programme description.

👩‍💻 Why the Speaker List Matters

The four women on the "Intelligent Machines" panel are not brought in from outside Oman's tech sector. Dr. Fatima Al Raisi teaches computer science at Sultan Qaboos University, the country's largest public research university. Amna Al Sinani, Beylasan Al Ruzaiqi and Dr. Aziza Al Zadjali work at Future Data, Onsor and Star Labs respectively, three Omani technology and data companies that rarely get profiled together in national media. Pairing an academic with three practitioners from local firms gives the session an evidence base rooted in Oman's own labour market rather than imported case studies.

Organiser Hanan Al Siyabi, Section Head of Tourism and Lifestyle at SEZAD, framed the stakes for participants in comments carried by The Arabian Stories on August 16:

In the same report, Al Siyabi pointed to Pew Research Center data from June 2026 showing 47 percent of women now use AI chatbots, up from 36 percent in 2024, but that men remain more likely than women to use chatbots daily at work and to believe those tools increase their productivity. The gap is the practical justification for putting four Omani women technologists on stage rather than treating AI adoption as gender-neutral by default.

📅 The Rest of the Series

The second evening, "Leading Without a Playbook," moves from technology to management, examining how executives make decisions amid tariffs, geopolitical tension and incomplete information, with speakers drawn from the Royal Academy of Management, the Development Bank, Sohar International Bank, SalamAir, OQ8 and Oman's Ministry of Economy, according to Times of Oman. The final evening, "The Business of Culture," on August 25, looks at how organisational culture shapes customer experience.

As Al Siyabi explained to The Arabian Stories on July 29, the three topics were not chosen abstractly: they emerged from conversations during the SEZAD-SQU Summer Internship Programme, where participants said they wanted "a series shaped by the experiences and questions women in Duqm are already bringing to their work." SEZAD ran a similarly structured but investor-facing "Duqm Summer" briefing series in August 2025 that also covered AI applications, workforce adaptability and supply chains; the 2026 edition is the first built specifically around Omani women professionals rather than investors, and the first to name individual AI and data practitioners as speakers.

🇴🇲 Why This Matters for Oman

Duqm is one of Oman's flagship economic diversification projects under Vision 2040, built around the port, refinery, dry dock and an emerging technology and logistics base. SEZAD's own framing, that "Duqm's next stage of development will depend as much on talent as it does on infrastructure and investment," is a reminder that the zone's long-term value depends on whether local professionals, and specifically local women, can move into the technical and managerial roles that AI adoption is reshaping. Programmes like this sit alongside the wider wave of Oman-based accelerators and skills initiatives covered in AI in Oman's roundup of startup and AI programmes opening across the Sultanate this fall, and they add a workforce-readiness angle to a national AI push that has so far been dominated by headlines about data centres, chip investment and the new AI Special Zone. A three-evening series in Duqm will not close Oman's AI skills gap on its own, but it is a concrete, dated example of a government economic zone using named local practitioners, not imported consultants, to make that case to its own workforce.