A program supported by Google.org reached more than 54,000 learners in 11 countries across the Middle East and North Africa, and over half chose to study in Arabic.
In a job interview in Saudi Arabia, a small-business owner found himself doing something he hadn’t expected: talking confidently about artificial intelligence. A few months earlier, he wouldn’t have known where to start.
He was one of more than 13,000 people who completed Elements of AI for Business across the Middle East and North Africa last year, part of a program that reached more than 54,000 learners across 11 countries.
For learners across the MENA region, the options for learning about AI had long been limited. Most resources were in English or assumed a level of technical literacy that most people simply didn’t have. The interest was there, but the entry point wasn’t. Village Capital and MinnaLearn partnered with 21 local organizations to change that, with the program supported by Google.org.
Translation is the easy part
A word-for-word translation can make content accessible without making it useful. AI terminology is particularly awkward to localize: the concepts are new even in English, Arabic equivalents often don’t exist, and literal translations can confuse more than clarify. In some cases, Nada Elqattan, senior program associate at Village Capital, explains, learners were more comfortable with the English acronym than any Arabic version.
Over half of participants chose to study in Arabic. “Without the Arabic translation,” says Elqattan, “we would have created an invisible gate for people in marginalized communities.” For more than half the learners, the translation was the reason the program reached them at all.
Fitting a single curriculum to a diverse region
Although Arabic gave the program a shared language, it did not automatically give it a shared context. Digital access, connectivity, and attitudes toward online learning varied widely across the 11 countries involved. The program flexed and fit emerging needs: When it turned out that 2% of participants preferred French in North Africa, the team opened up the French course, even though it hadn’t been part of the original plan.
Nearly 1,800 hours of in-person workshops supplemented the online course, with local facilitators adapting the material to their own communities. Six in-person events brought in experts that participants could speak with directly, recognizing that in some contexts, trust and dialogue matter as much as content. The curriculum gave everyone a common foundation, but it was thanks to the 21 local partner organizations that it felt relevant to all participants.
From hesitation to application
Confidence scores tracked through pre- and post-program surveys shifted remarkably: ones and twos at the start becoming fours and fives by the end. Nearly a quarter of participants reported an income increase, indicating that the learning was connecting with actual work and real life.
A business owner in Saudi Arabia had used AI to automate repetitive tasks. But what surprised him, he said, was that being able to hold a confident conversation about AI was helping him in job interviews: rooms where, not long before, the topic would have remained elusive to him. “The shift from ‘AI is too technical for me’ to ‘I see myself actually using this’ is hard to capture in data,” says Elqattan. “But for us, it became one of the most meaningful metrics.”
Beyond the usual tech hubs
In Egypt alone, the program reached all 27 governorates — communities where AI education had barely arrived yet, and where Elements of AI for Business, built for general audiences rather than specialists, turned out to be exactly the right tool.
“Village Capital brought local leadership and an understanding of what local delivery actually requires,” says Elqattan. “MinnaLearn brought the material that was needed to reach everyone, from marginalized communities to emerging learners.”
Like many other participants, the man in Saudi Arabia who walked into job interviews newly confident wasn’t someone whom most AI courses were built for. He was someone who finally had a way in.
