The UAE is opening up its playbook on government modernization to Syria, running a week-long executive leadership program for Syrian officials even as non-oil trade between the two countries surges 132.4 percent to $1.4 billion.
The initiative brings Syrian government leaders to the UAE for a knowledge visit focused on studying how the country runs its public institutions. It is part of a broader push to share administrative and policy expertise with partner nations, and it lands at a moment when commercial ties between the UAE and Syria are expanding sharply.
What the training covers
The program started on August 31 and runs across four training modules over seven days. Sessions are delivered in Arabic, combining in-person and virtual formats, and participants who complete the course receive a certificate of attendance.
The curriculum spans strategic leadership, innovation, and public policymaking, along with design thinking for the public sector, public policy design, government innovation and excellence, and future governance and trend foresight. Together, the modules are meant to walk Syrian officials through the tools and thinking the UAE has used to build and refine its own government systems.
Part of a long-running exchange effort
The training sits under the UAE Government Experience Exchange Programme, which was established in 2018 to share the country's administrative know-how with other governments. According to a 2024 UAE government report, the programme has built more than 35 international partnerships, delivered over 30 million training hours, and trained more than 3.2 million people to date.
The same report noted that the programme has implemented 367 initiatives and run more than 2,400 interactive workshops, spread across more than 100 workstreams. That scale suggests the Syria training is one strand of a much wider effort rather than a one-off gesture.
Trade ties are growing alongside the training
The knowledge exchange comes as economic links between the UAE and Syria strengthen. Non-oil trade between the two countries has jumped 132.4 percent to reach $1.4 billion, a sharp rise that points to deepening commercial engagement running in parallel with the governance cooperation.
For Dubai and the wider UAE, the pairing of a formal training programme with rising trade figures signals an approach that blends institutional relationship-building with economic opening. Syrian officials leave the programme with a certificate and, in principle, tools from the UAE's public-sector experience; the trade numbers suggest the relationship between the two countries is also being tested and built in the marketplace.
No further details on the number of Syrian officials involved, the venues used, or timelines for future training rounds were included in the information available about this program.