RIYADH: Saudi Arabia's education sector is undergoing a strategic transformation, shifting focus to specialised areas such as artificial intelligence, robotics and nuclear energy.
The Economic Diversification Plan under Vision 2030 is an important step in equipping the Kingdom’s future workforce with highly sought-after skills to enable them to find jobs in the future.
Mansoor Ahmed, managing director for the Middle East and North Africa at Colliers, a Canadian-based professional services and management firm, says the shift to AI and technology is creating new job opportunities and driving higher education reform.
“Graduates with expertise in these areas will fill high-demand roles, helping to reduce youth unemployment,” Ahmed told Arab News.
Saudi Arabia's National Strategy on Data and Artificial Intelligence, launched in 2020, aims to attract $20 billion in investment by 2030 and create a 20,000-strong AI and data workforce.
Ahmed said the emergence of these highly skilled tech workers would attract foreign investment, “putting Saudi Arabia in a potential leadership position in innovation.”
AI could add more than $320 billion to the Middle East economy, PWC's analysis predicts Saudi Arabia will have the biggest gains in real terms, at $135.2 billion, and the UAE will have the biggest overall impact, at 14 percent of projected GDP by 2030.
“The development of nuclear power plants and the integration of AI across sectors will create specialized roles in engineering, data analytics and machine learning,” Ahmed said. “This highlights the need to prioritize education in AI, robotics and nuclear energy.”
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Saudi Arabia has reaffirmed its commitment to future technologies by becoming a hub for global events and forums such as LEAP, the Global AI Summit, and the International Exhibition and Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Cloud Computing.
However, if the kingdom hopes to become a leader in these specialised areas, it must first close the gap between market demand and educational output.
A report by Colliers found that the current distribution of enrollees at the kingdom’s public universities is “out of sync with the labour market”, with students still favouring liberal arts and Islamic studies.
That’s changing now. King Abdullah University of Science and Technology has an AI program focused on research and graduate studies, while the KAUST Academy focuses on developing AI talent with programs aimed at external learners.
“KAUST aims to address this gap by offering specialized training and development programs in areas of high demand, helping students transition from traditional academic fields to more market-oriented fields,” Sultan Albarakati, director of KAUST Academy, told Arab News.
“We are focusing on upskilling a broad range of undergraduate students to prepare them for the future job market,”
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Saudi Arabia's National Strategy on Data and Artificial Intelligence Aims to Attract $20 Billion in Investment by 2030
The Kingdom aims to cultivate 20,000 AI and data professionals by the end of the decade.
AI could add more than $320 billion to the Middle East economy, with Saudi Arabia alone generating $135.2 billion.
KAUST’s AI program, supported by the Saudi Arabian Agency for Data and Artificial Intelligence, covers all disciplines from basic to advanced levels, with projects that allow students to demonstrate their knowledge.
The program focuses on developing skills in key areas such as deep learning libraries, optimization, linear algebra, machine learning, computer vision, artificial intelligence applications, Python programming, and large-scale deep learning.
To support AI research in Saudi Arabia, Silicon Valley tech giant Google has awarded five inaugural grants to KAUST faculty members, worth a total of $100,000, to be used for projects focused on multilingual and multi-modal machine learning, particularly large-scale generative language models.
KAUST focuses on developing AI skills with programs aimed at external learners (available).
Ahmed said Saudi Arabia’s AI investments span sectors ranging from healthcare, robotics, manufacturing and the service industry, leading to new roles that require a mix of technical and analytical skills.
“This cross-industry application will greatly expand the career opportunities for graduates,” he said.
AI is expected to transform the world of work in the coming years, with an estimated 23 percent of jobs expected to change by 2027, with 69 million new jobs created and 83 million lost, according to the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs 2023 report.
To ensure that educational outcomes are aligned with labor market needs, the Saudi Human Capacity Development Programme has committed to reviewing higher education degrees based on recent and expected employment outcomes.
“These in-demand skills training will help Saudi citizens succeed in a technology-driven economy, with HCDP focusing on critical thinking, problem-solving and technical expertise,” Ahmed said.
