When the pandemic first began to take hold, the development of a vaccination against the coronavirus wasn’t just a way to prevent its spread, but a means to go back to normality.

Yet now that several vaccines have received approval and are being administered in many countries around the world, the route back to normality is looking rough and somewhat vague. With these vaccines, we are likely to see widening gaps between the countries that can afford it and have the infrastructure in place to administer it to their populations, and the countries that do not. We are likely to see further, not fewer, travel restrictions and the way we do businesses will depend on where we are in the world.

We spoke with Dr Noah Raford, futurist at the Dubai Future Foundation, to get a better idea of what the world will look like post-vaccine, the opportunities it presents for startups the Middle East and why Chinese technology has the potential to surpass Silicon Valley.