Apple is planning to open its first Apple Developer Academy headquarters for the Middle East and North African region (MENA) in Riyadh, the capital city of Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Gazette reports The Apple Developer Academy is part of a program to ensure that students that are interested in technological fields receive proper training for developing apps across all of the Cupertino firm’s devices. Under a curriculum created by Apple, students will learn how to write and manage apps for the iOS, watchOS, macOS, and tvOS platforms.
Apple will partner with the Saudi Federation for Cybersecurity, Programming, and Drones alongside the Tuwaiq Academy and the Princess Nourah Bint Abdulrahaman Unversity. Saudi Arabia’s Minister of Education, Dr. Hamad Al-Sheikh, called Apple’s expansion of the academy into the country a “key center for producing programmers and technology developers.”
One of the academy’s key aims will be women’s empowerment in the technology space and part of Saudi Arabia’s “Vision 2030” plan, which aims to diversify the economy beyond reliance on oil.
The chairman of the SAFCSP (Saudi Federation for Cybersecurity, Programming, and Drones), Faisal Al-Khamisi, hopes the new partnership will create more opportunities for the Saudi workforce, and the local community.
In our partnership with Apple, we will work together and strive to create an economic ecosystem for business to instill skills that enhance innovation and technology, and ensure a sustainable and prosperous future for our local community and the societies of the world that will undoubtedly benefit from the technical cadres that will receive education and training at the Apple Academy.
Apple’s first Developer Academy launched in Brazil in 2013 and has since expanded to more countries.
