Apple to Open Apple Developer Academy in Saudi Arabia, First in the MENA Region

Apple plans 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, reports Saudi Gazette.

apple dev academy
The Apple Developer Academy is Apple's strategic program to ensure that students interested in technology receive proper training for programming across all of its platforms. Students are taught how to write and manage iOS, macOS, tvOS, and watchOS apps, and are all taught under a curriculum created by Apple.

In Saudi Arabia, 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, says it is his hope that 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.

The first Apple Developer Academy launched in Brazil in 2013 and has since expanded to more countries, with Saudi Arabia being the latest as part of Apple's global outreach to students passionate about app development.

Note: Due to the political or social nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Political News forum. All forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.

Top Rated Comments

TheYayAreaLiving ?️ Avatar
37 months ago
This is great news. Didn’t see that one coming. Hoping India is next?
Score: 9 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Agit21 Avatar
37 months ago
Great news, I hope Apple will expand to many more regions all across the world.
Score: 5 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Phil A. Avatar
37 months ago
Mod Note
I have deleted several posts due to them containing political content or quoting post which did: Political posts are not permitted in the general forums. Please see this post ('https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/politics-religion-social-issues-forum-closed-july-2021.2303225/') from the site owner for more information
Score: 5 Votes (Like | Disagree)
hot-gril Avatar
37 months ago
I'm curious where the other ones are located since this article mentions it's the first in the MENA region. It's interesting that they expanded to Saudi Arabia before Israel, given that they have an office in Israel.
Score: 4 Votes (Like | Disagree)
T Coma Avatar
37 months ago
Curious about how they will “just comply with local laws.” That is the popular phrase around here, right?
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)
contacos Avatar
37 months ago
I just hope it is somewhat divers. I wish I could code but I am too stupid for it. Took me 4 tries to finally pass „Java advanced“ (I had no choice) at Uni ? and i am sure I cannot even do „Hello World“ at this point. Must be cool if you actually get the hang of it, creating something. Instead I am on the other side, telling them what I need done
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)

Popular Stories

maxresdefault

Apple Announces 'Let Loose' Event on May 7 Amid Rumors of New iPads

Tuesday April 23, 2024 7:11 am PDT by
Apple has announced it will be holding a special event on Tuesday, May 7 at 7 a.m. Pacific Time (10 a.m. Eastern Time), with a live stream to be available on Apple.com and on YouTube as usual. The event invitation has a tagline of "Let Loose" and shows an artistic render of an Apple Pencil, suggesting that iPads will be a focus of the event. Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more ...
Apple Vision Pro Dual Loop Band Orange Feature 2

Apple Cuts Vision Pro Shipments as Demand Falls 'Sharply Beyond Expectations'

Tuesday April 23, 2024 9:44 am PDT by
Apple has dropped the number of Vision Pro units that it plans to ship in 2024, going from an expected 700 to 800k units to just 400k to 450k units, according to Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. Orders have been scaled back before the Vision Pro has launched in markets outside of the United States, which Kuo says is a sign that demand in the U.S. has "fallen sharply beyond expectations." As a...
Apple Silicon AI Optimized Feature Siri

Apple Releases Open Source AI Models That Run On-Device

Wednesday April 24, 2024 3:39 pm PDT by
Apple today released several open source large language models (LLMs) that are designed to run on-device rather than through cloud servers. Called OpenELM (Open-source Efficient Language Models), the LLMs are available on the Hugging Face Hub, a community for sharing AI code. As outlined in a white paper [PDF], there are eight total OpenELM models, four of which were pre-trained using the...
iPad And Calculator App Feature

Apple Finally Plans to Release a Calculator App for iPad Later This Year

Tuesday April 23, 2024 9:08 am PDT by
Apple is finally planning a Calculator app for the iPad, over 14 years after launching the device, according to a source familiar with the matter. iPadOS 18 will include a built-in Calculator app for all iPad models that are compatible with the software update, which is expected to be unveiled during the opening keynote of Apple's annual developers conference WWDC on June 10. AppleInsider...
iOS 17 All New Features Thumb

iOS 17.5 Will Add These New Features to Your iPhone

Sunday April 21, 2024 3:00 am PDT by
The upcoming iOS 17.5 update for the iPhone includes only a few new user-facing features, but hidden code changes reveal some additional possibilities. Below, we have recapped everything new in the iOS 17.5 and iPadOS 17.5 beta so far. Web Distribution Starting with the second beta of iOS 17.5, eligible developers are able to distribute their iOS apps to iPhone users located in the EU...