Saudi Gazette Report

KUWAIT CITY — Mohamed AbdulRahman Al-Sharekh, a prominent Kuwaiti businessman and a great pioneer in Arab software technology, passed away on Wednesday at the age of 82. Al-Sharekh, president and chairman of Sakhr Software Company, introduced the first Arabic language Operating System into computers.

Al-Sharekh was born in Kuwait City in 1942, and received a bachelor’s degree in economics from the Faculty of Economics and Political Science at Cairo University, followed by a master’s degree in economic development from Williams College in Massachusetts, USA.

He has held many governmental positions in Kuwait, and was founding chairman and managing director of the Industrial Bank of Kuwait in 1975. During his career, Al-Sharekh held various positions as an economist and entrepreneur, including his appointment as the deputy director of the Kuwait Fund for Economic Development between 1969 and 1973 and as the deputy executive director of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development in Washington from 1973 to 1975.

He also assumed the position of chairman of the Board of Directors of Kuwait Industrial Bank between 1975 and 1979 and vice president of the Arab Economists Society. He also founded the International Electronics Company in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.

Al-Sharekh founded his own company Al-Alamiah in 1980, and launched in 1982 Sakhr Software Company. He was the first person to develop Arabic language software for computers and IT. Sakhr Software Co. is the company that introduced the first Arab computer, the first Arabic technology, and the first to bridge the language gap between Arabic and non-Arabic speakers.

Al-Sharekh scored many achievements during his career, including the archive of Islamic information, optical recognition and pronunciation of Arabic letters, translation from and to Arabic, and automated speech translation. He worked on developing more than 90 educational and programming programs for young people, publishing computer education books, training teachers, and establishing institutes for teaching computer programming.

Al-Sharekh has also been a pioneer in developing different computer programs for Arabic language like the contemporary electronic dictionary, the Arabic editor program, the automated Arabic pronunciation program, and the Arabic e-translation program.

As a well-known writer, he authored two collections of short stories -“Ten Stories,” and “Secrets and other stories” and one novel “The Family.”

Al-Sharekh is the winner of several national and international awards. These included the King Faisal International Prize for Service to Islam in 2021. The prize is in recognition of his outstanding role in instilling the spirit of research, creativity, and innovation to preserve the heritage of the Muslim community through the production of the first software for the Holy Qur’an.

He also won the Outstanding Contribution to Arabization award in recognition of his efforts in leading the Arabic language into the age of technology, and in annealing technology to the needs of the Arabic language. He was chosen for the World Summit Awards in 2007 and the Gulf Success Forum Award in 1996.