Saudi Gazette report

RIYADH – Crown Prince Muhammad Bin Salman, deputy premier and minister of defense, and chairman of the Human Capability Development Program Committee, launched on Monday the Strategy of Custodian of The Two Holy Mosques Scholarship Program.

The launch of the strategy is part of the Kingdom’s efforts to develop human capabilities and realize objectives of the Kingdom’s Vision 2030. The program will be applied through the Ministry of Education’s Safeer platform, the Saudi Press Agency reported.

The launch of the strategy is a continuation of the Kingdom’s efforts to increase citizens’ readiness for the future as well as to improve their global competitiveness. The strategy marks the beginning of a new era in the scholarship program that will contribute to enhancing citizens’ competitiveness through upskilling the human capital in new and promising sectors to fulfill the needs of the future labor market.

The Human Capability Development Program Committee has developed the strategy in collaboration with relevant entities. It is designed to cover different educational paths aligned with Vision 2030 priorities, as well as its programs, and the evolving labor market needs.

The strategy includes three strategic pillars. The first pillar aimed at enhancing awareness among students on the importance of early planning for their educational and practical journey at global institutions and universities in different fields while the aim of the second pillar is scholarship paths and programs creation in order to elevate the Kingdom’s competitiveness both locally and globally.

This will be through focusing on future disciplines and fulfilling the needs of local and global labor markets in collaboration with top educational institutions based on global rankings.

The third pillar ensures proper post-graduation follow-ups and guidance for the scholarship beneficiaries, providing them with services to improve their readiness to join the labor market locally and globally.

The strategy consists of four paths with clear and specific objectives. The Pioneers (Al-Rowad) path aims to have students enrolled in the top 30 educational institutions around the world, in various academic branches, which will enable citizens to excel and compete in all fields.

The Research and Development (Al-Bahth Wa Al-Tatweer) path is an important enabler to boost the Kingdom’s research and innovation ecosystem via investing in students to join the top institutions and universities around the world to become the scientists of the future.

The Provider (Emdad) path aims to fulfill the labor market needs by continuously updating the list of highly demanded fields in the top 200 universities to provide the labor market with the necessary competencies, while the Promising (Wa’ed) path aims to train scholarship recipients in promising sectors and fields based on national demands by giga projects and priority sectors, such as manufacturing and tourism.