SAMAI 2 — Saudi Arabia's SDAIA Extends Its AI-Training Programme Into 11 Government Ministries

Saudi Arabia's Data & AI Authority (SDAIA) ran "SAMAI" through 2025 as a national citizen AI-literacy programme, certifying more than 1.1 million Saudis with accredited AI training — 52% of participants women — under the Kingdom's Vision 2030 digital agenda, according to the Saudi Press Agency and the Ministry of Education.
On 29 January 2026, at the ICAN 2026 conference in Riyadh, SDAIA launched a second phase, SAMAI 2, moving from citizen-wide outreach to sector-specific workforce training inside 11 government ministries — health, finance, media, justice, industry and mineral resources, transport and logistics, education, human resources and social development, municipalities and housing, sport, and energy — with specialised, sector-tailored AI training and awareness programmes for ministry employees.
SDAIA has publicised SAMAI 1's completion numbers (1.1 million citizens, 52% female) but has not yet published participation or outcome figures for SAMAI 2 itself, which launched only weeks before this review; Saudi Arabia's public sector employs roughly 1.2 million people, giving a sense of the programme's potential reach.
As with SAMAI 1, the publicly available figures are government-reported completion and certification counts rather than independently verified measures of on-the-job AI use, productivity gain or service-quality change; no third-party audit of SAMAI 2 has been published.

Read the full analysis: https://www.moe.gov.sa/en/mediacenter/MOEnews/Pages/news1_09112025.aspx