Amazon opens academy in Saudi

Amazon has established a new academy in Saudi Arabia to support the kingdom’s human capital program for the digital economy. In collaboration with the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, the academy will be run by the Saudi Digital Academy and the Tuwaiq Academy.

The aim of the academy is to train over 30,000 Saudis, award 35,000 certificates, and provide 100 internships by 2025. The curriculum has been designed by Amazon Web Services, the company’s cloud computing unit, as well as its operations and customer experience teams. The training programs will consist of virtual self-paced modules, in-classroom sessions, and hands-on workshops.

Courses covered include cloud architecture, artificial intelligence, machine learning, data analytics, customer fulfillment, last-mile logistics, and entrepreneurship.

The academy is set to provide a boost to the kingdom’s ambitions of creating the local talent necessary to support the goals of Vision 2030, which seeks to diversify the economy away from oil and into technology. The global digital transformation market is projected to reach approximately $3.95 trillion by 2030.