SDAIA's SAMAI initiative trains 330,000 Saudis in AI
National AI literacy campaign gains momentum, aims for 1 million target
#SaudiArabia #education- Saudi Data and Artificial Intelligence Authority (SDAIA) President Dr. Abdullah Alghamdi has announced that the "One Million Saudis in AI" initiative, SAMAI has successfully trained 334,000 Saudi citizens in artificial intelligence skills Developed in partnership with the Ministry of Education and Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development,, the programme is now one-third of the way towards its ambitious goal of training one million Saudis. SAMAI was launched at the Global AI Summit (GAIN) in September last year and aims to build critical AI capabilities across the population to strengthen national competencies.
SO WHAT? - SAMAI forms part of Saudi Arabia's systematic approach to building national AI competencies at unprecedented scale, positioning the Kingdom as a global leader in population-wide AI education. Training over 330,000 citizens makes SAMAI one of the largest AI literacy programmes worldwide. The milestone is partly a result of a recruitment drive for the programme run over the past few months.
Here are some key details about SAMAI and SDAIA’s programmes:
The"One Million Saudis in AI" initiative, SAMAI, has successfully trained 334,000 Saudi citizens in artificial intelligence skills, according to comments made by H.E. Professor Abdullah bin Sharaf Alghamdi at the second edition of the Non-Profit Sector Forum in Education and Training 2025, hosted this week by the Ministry of Education.
The SAMAI initiative launched at the Global AI Summit (GAIN) in September 2024 targeting citizens across all age groups and professional backgrounds, in a whole-of-society approach to drive AI adoption.
Core objectives for SAMAI include:
Raising public awareness of artificial intelligence
Supporting lifelong learning opportunities in AI
Keeping up with labour market demands for AI skills
The Kingdom’s AI education programmes have achieved significant reach, including the National Olympiad for Programming and Artificial Intelligence, or ‘ATHKA’, launched in 2023.
The "Road to ATHKA" programme trained more than 570,000 students on AI concepts as s prelude to the competition, which engaged 260,000 student participants from 10,000 schools. 10,000 participants advanced to the final stage of the nation-wide competition.
Meanwhile, SDAIA’s "Future Intelligence Programmers" initiative has trained over 10,000 teachers to prepare them for personalised and intelligent learning environments tailored to students' evolving educational needs.
The Center for Excellence in Education, formed in partnership with the Ministry of Education, integrates AI and technology education across the education sector.
SDAIA oversees nine nonprofit organisations focused on education, community awareness and AI knowledge dissemination, collectively recording over 8,100 volunteer hours with participation from more than 300 Saudi volunteers.
The National Platform for Charitable Work "Ehsan" has collected over SAR12 billion ($3.2 billion) in donations over four years, providing more than 2,000 educational opportunities and funding projects valued at over SAR450 million ($120m) supporting 955,000 students.
ZOOM OUT - The SAMAI initiative operates under Saudi Arabia's National Strategy for Data and AI (NSDAI), launched in 2020, which targets creating 20,000 AI and data specialists by 2030. The strategy's skills pillar of the strategy emphasises transforming the Saudi workforce through talent development and incorporating AI education to align with labour market requirements. Strategy goals include positioning Saudi Arabia among the top 15 countries globally in AI.
[Written and edited with the assistance of AI]
LINKS
SAMAI registration (SAMAI website)
Read more about SDAIA education initiatives:
Saudi Arabia urges citizens to register for SAMAI training (Middle East AI News)
SDAIA trains 779,000 in data & AI skills (Middle East AI News)
Saudi launches AI-powered National Skills Platform (Middle East AI News)
Tuwaiq Academy & Berkeley aim to equip CEOs for AI (Middle East AI News)
SDAIA targets top potential AI talent (Middle East AI News)
Saudi to train 300,000 school students in AI (Middle East AI News)