Orange Mali–UNDP Digital Skills Partnership
Mali
In June 2024, UNDP Mali and Orange Mali launched a two-year partnership to train 3,000 young people in digital skills …
Good practice
Imported
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One Million Arab Coders Initiative
United Arab Emirates · Dubai · See the United Arab Emirates profile · See the Dubai profile
Evidence: Descriptive / self-reported Top 82% 52/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice
Dubai-led pan-Arab initiative delivering free online coding courses via Udacity to Arab youth across 80 countries; reported 1 million participants, 5 million study hours and 100,000 graduation projects between 2017 and 2022.
5 million hours
Cumulative study hours completed (2017-2022)
76,000 workshops
Training workshops delivered (2017-2022)
100,000 projects
Graduation projects produced (2017-2022)
80 countries
Countries with participating learners (2017-2022)
1,500 scholarships
Scholarships awarded (2017-2022)
1 million USD
Grand prize awarded at closing coding challenge (2022)
Details
- Maturity
- Discontinued
- Promoter
- Dubai Future Foundation (Mohammed bin Rashid Global Initiatives) with Udacity
- Period
- 2017-2022
- Keywords
- digital skills, coding education, youth employment, public-private partnership
Context
The One Million Arab Coders Initiative was launched in 2017 under Mohammed bin Rashid Global Initiatives and led by the Dubai Future Foundation, in partnership with the US online-education platform Udacity. It offered free digital-skills courses in software development, data science, AI/ML and cloud computing to young people across the Arab world.
Activities
Training was delivered through workshops and courses across the Arab world, culminating in a closing 'coding challenge' judged by a jury of regional tech executives, with a $1 million grand prize plus five $50,000 project awards and four $25,000 trainer awards.
Results
By the closing ceremony in May 2022, organisers reported that participants from 80 countries had completed 5 million cumulative study hours across 76,000 training workshops, producing 100,000 graduation projects; 1,500 scholarships were awarded to outstanding students over the programme's life.
Implementation
- Indicative cost
- Very high (> €5M)
- Time to results
- Long (> 3 years)
Commonly funded by
National / regional programmes
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Data sources
Where this practice's information was retrieved from, and when.
- C-NAPSE web research — accessed 2026-07-03
- Dubai Future Foundation (Mohammed bin Rashid Global Initiatives) with Udacity — accessed 2026-07-03
- Gulf News – initiative achieves target — accessed 2026-07-03
- Dubai Media Office — accessed 2026-07-03
Attachments
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