First Published: 24th of October, 2021
Last updated: October 24, 2021 at 11:38 amIn the 1960s, Dubai was only a desert, and the residents led a very simple village life. Palm tree branches were used to build house roofs, and tree trunks supported tents. Nevertheless, the people were happy and contented as they still are today in a booming and ever-expanding oil economy.
In 1966, oil was discovered in offshore of the city of Dubai. Sheikh put the oil revenue to good use. He invested a lot of it into infrastructural development of the country. In the span of a few decades, Dubai’s transformation from a desert into a metropolis was surreal. By the year 2012, Dubai was regarded as the most developed city in the world. In fact, a video documentary featuring the city of Dubai in the year 2015 was captioned, “Dubai is obviously not from this planet.”
Dubai therefore, became a metaphor for an immensely successful oil economy. In 2015, when the small South American country of Guyana, South America discovered vast amounts of oil, the citizens became excited and exclaimed that Guyana will become “the Dubai of South America.”
