2022, What a Memorable Year! Let’s look at it together

Looking back at 2022, it was a great year for Zaka and our community despite the struggles and difficulties that the whole world is facing.

Following Steve Jobs’ saying: “Great things in business are never done by one person. They’re done by a team of people”, our team of 10 is working as a family, where each member’s strength benefits everyone, and the groups’ achievements are a motivation for each person to keep going to achieve our mission.

Below are some numbers that we were able to achieve because of your trust in our mission!

Our Continuous Partnership with Microsoft

As a Microsoft Global Training Partner, we are always holding different programs with the tech giant to upskill people in the field.

This year, we had 3 different programs during which 530 learners joined us from UAE, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Qatar. The participants came from different backgrounds and ages, ranging from high school students to university students and educators. Some of the training programs aimed to upskill participants in AI, and others went beyond AI education to mentoring and preparing teams to participate in global Microsoft competitions such as the Imagine Cup Competition.

Zaka’s Membership

To help connect all AI enthusiasts around the MENA region, we decided this year to launch our Membership Program in the form of a community access that is focused on our members, beginners or experts, offering and receiving support from each other.

The membership was launched in June 2022, and has now more than 1150 AI enthusiasts joining from different countries in the MENA region.

By joining our Membership Program members get access to our Learning Platform with self-paced AI courses, a monthly Ask Me Anything (AMA) session with our CEO, a monthly Masterclass with industry experts, group mentoring sessions, career opportunities and much more.

We would like to list and thank all the amazing community experts who held workshops and masterclasses for our community throughout the year. Thank you all for sharing your knowledge with our community members, it was a pleasure working with you!

Elizabeth Kassab Sfeir, Abubakar Abid, Julia El Zini, Rabih Kfoury, Zied Tayeb, Samaher Garabaya, Wissam Antoun, Dima El Zein, Ahmad Abaza, Mohammad Arshad, Raymond Younan, Hervoje Novak, Tony Soulage, Alaa Khaddaj, Tarry Singh, Tannistha Maiti, Nataly Dalal, Nasser AlOstath, Hadi Salman, Natasha Alkhatib, Mohamad Al Srouji, Jawad Kaisania, Mohammad Bani Hani , Nuran AlSayed, Bashayer AlFawaz, Reem Al Shammari, Mohammed AlAlam, Maryam Abdul Baseer.

Ambassadors Program

This year was focused on expanding our community, and part of it was the launch of our Students Ambassador Program.

The Student Ambassador’s role is to establish a strong communication link between university students in the region and the rest of Zaka’s community. This helps us serve our community in a more efficient way, tailored to their needs.

We are ending this year with 28 ambassadors from all around the MENA region: Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Lebanon, Egypt, UAE, Tunisia, Kenya, and Ghana!

Our Ambassadors are passionate leaders in their local community who are dedicated to helping others grow and connect by hosting local AI workshops, AI challenges, and many more activities and events.

Zaka’s presence at different conferences and events

This Year, Zaka got the chance to participate in three conferences and events! First, we flew to the Vivatech annual technology conference, Europe’s biggest startup, innovation and tech event, that happened from June 15th until June 18th, 2022 in Paris.

VivaTech is the world’s rendezvous for startups and leaders to celebrate innovation. It’s a gathering of the world’s brightest minds, talents, and products. You can check more about our participation in VivaTech through this blog.

Then Zaka participated in the huge Gitex event that happened from October 10th till October 14th.

Gitex Global is an expo held annually in Dubai, United Arab Emirates at Dubai World Trade Center. The event focuses on the rapid technology-driven transformations, investments and projects shaping the economies of the Middle East, Africa and Asia.

Read more about our experience on this blog.

We also flew this year to Egypt to participate in the Techne Summit event that happened from November 5th till November 8th.

Techne Summit is an international multi-industry focused Investment & Entrepreneurship event that aims to impact multiple sectors and stakeholders of the Startup Communities in The Mediterranean Region through showcasing different technologies and their application in each industry.

It’s been a great experience for Zaka to participate in these three conferences, we wrapped it up with exciting opportunities and chats with different communities around the world.

Klangoo x Zaka Challenge

On the 23rd of June Zaka and Klangoo partnered to launch the Klangoo Fintech Challenge.

A challenge that offered the chance for bright and talented minds to come together to build Fintech solutions for the community.

The goal of this challenge was to use Klangoo’s NLP API to solve different fintech problems around the world.

17 teams were accepted into the challenge, with 50 participants from 7 countries and 3 winners were announced at the final ceremony.

It was truly a pleasure to be hosting such a hackathon for bright and talented minds to come together to build Fintech solutions for the community.

Tech for Inclusivity Program

As part of our activities this year, we also launched the Tech for Inclusivity Program in collaboration with SPARK and support from Google.org, to equip our Lebanese community with the critical skills needed to get hired in the tech industry within only 7 months!

This 7-month intensive professional training program had the goal of preparing the participants to become market-ready Machine Learning Engineers. During the first 4 months of the program, the participants received intensive training in Machine Learning followed by 3 months of career support, counseling, and job search support.

By the end of the program, 31 candidates graduated as well-rounded Machine Learning Engineers ready to land a job in today’s market, many of which landed jobs within a few months of graduation.

New specialization launched in our Artificial Intelligence Certification Program

This year, we added a new specialization to our 16-week AI Certification program, which is the Data Science track!

You can learn more about the difference between Machine Learning and Data Science in the following blog.

We also have some good news!
Zaka is always on the lookout for AI developments and trends to make sure it serves our mission of democratizing AI in the region. That’s why, we’re launching the Data Engineering specialization in our Artificial Intelligence Certification Program which is specifically designed to give the ultimate, shortest, and cheapest path to reach the goal of becoming a Data Engineer.
Our team is dedicated to preparing and supporting you to have the strongest entry into the Data Engineering field in only 16 weeks!

Exciting Partnerships

We signed many partnerships this year with different parties sharing our goal of democratizing Artificial Intelligence in the region.

Other than the 34 companies that joined our Partners’ Network to benefit from different offers and opportunities, we signed many MOUs and partnerships throughout the year.

Deepkapha, an AI-based company that relies on research to build sustainable AI solutions for the future, became our partner this year after meeting their CEO, Tarry Singh, in the Comex Technology show in Oman last May.

During our participation in the Gitex conference in Dubai last October, Zaka’s CEO Christophe Zoghbi also signed an MOU with Qewamx, a KSA-based cloud platform offering different features for education programs.

Moreover, this December, Zaka officially became a Certnexus authorized Training Partner.

CertNexus is a vendor-neutral certification body, providing emerging technology certifications and micro-credentials for business, data, developers, IT, and security professionals.

Check more about CertNexus and our partnership with them in this blog.

We also worked with Brightest, the ISO/IEC 17024 certified certification body, to launch the Machine Learning Engineer Certification exam. These partnerships validate our mission and effort in democratizing Artificial Intelligence and encourage us to keep going forward. Check out our Partners’ Network and how to join it here.

What’s next for Zaka in 2023?

Our mission will definitely never change, which is democratizing AI in the MENA region!

In 2023, we want to expand our community and reach as many AI enthusiasts as possible, who will share the journey with us.

We look forward to another great 2023 year together. Happy New year and best wishes to you and your families during this holiday season.

Stay tuned and be part of the change!