The BSV blockchain’s Switzerland-based industry association and the Saudi Digital Academy (SDA) have signed a memorandum of understanding to launch a BSV Blockchain Academy in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. This is the first full-scale blockchain academy in the Middle East region.

The SDA is a key national initiative by the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT) of Saudi Arabia, which aims to develop human capital and the digital capabilities of Saudi youth. It builds a national academy with international standards to educate Saudi talent in emerging technologies, and prepare them for careers in the communications and IT sector that advance the Kingdom’s digital transformation and ‘Saudi Vision 2030’.

Through the new blockchain academy in Riyadh, the BSV association and SDA will collaborate to provide blockchain learning and development resources for a variety of audiences – including developers, students, start-up entrepreneurs, business executives and government agency representatives. The academy will focus on the BSV blockchain, an enterprise-grade network that can support big business and government-scale data applications with high volumes of transactions at minimal cost; BSV median transaction fees are often a small fraction of a U.S. cent.

The BSV Blockchain Academy is the latest in a series of sector-specific educational programs launched by the SDA. As Eng. Faris AlSaqabi, Deputy Minister for Future Jobs & Capabilities at MCIT explains, “Because the Fourth Industrial Revolution involves many emerging technologies, the SDA seeks to attract multiple digital academies in order to provide training across all fields that will be vital to Saudi Arabia’s digital transformation. Since the initial academies announced at our launch event in October 2021, we continually look to add new fields of learning. Given the high interest in blockchain technology, we are proud to work with BSV’s team to bring world-class blockchain training to Saudi Arabia in this landmark initiative for the Middle East.”

Advertisement

The BSV blockchain’s association and SDA announced their educational partnership during a signing ceremony on the final day of LEAP 2022 – the global technology conference in Riyadh which took place on 1-3 February 2022. LEAP 2022 was the biggest ever technology event debut, attracting over 100,000 people.

Commenting on the agreement, Mohammed Alsuhaim, CEO of the Saudi Digital Academy said: “We are pleased that the Saudi Digital Academy is partnering with the BSV Blockchain Association to create in Riyadh the Middle East region’s first full scale blockchain academy. This initiative will teach students, developers, business executives and government representatives across Saudi Arabia the blockchain knowledge necessary to navigate the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The BSV team shares our vision for building true blockchain utility at big scale to power data for a digital Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and we anticipate this is the first step in other areas of collaboration with the BSV Blockchain Association.”

Also commenting, Jimmy Nguyen, Founding President of the BSV blockchain’s association said: “The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is at the forefront of emerging technologies such as Internet of Things, robotics, smart cities, and artificial intelligence. These fields are all driven by data, and only the BSV blockchain has the scaling capacity to act as their distributed data infrastructure. We are very excited to educate Saudi youth and professionals about the power of BSV to drive digital transformation and build a better world. We look forward to this educational partnership with the MCIT and the Saudi Digital Academy, and bringing useful blockchain adoption to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.”