The Federal Authority for Government Human Resources (FAHR) and Coursera, one of the world’s largest online learning platforms, recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding to facilitate the access of ministries and federal entities in the United Arab Emirates to professional online training and development programs at preferential rates.
The virtual signing ceremony of the MOU was attended by H.E. Laila Obaid Al Suwaidi, Acting Director General at FAHR and Mr. Kevin Mills, Vice President of Sales and Business Development at Coursera. Under the terms of this MOU, online learning programs will be offered at preferential prices to ministries and federal entities wishing to benefit from Coursera’s online courses and academies.
H.E. Laila Al Suwaidi said: “This partnership will serve the authority’s objective of providing ministries and federal entities with training programs and courses that enhance the efficiency of their employees and refine their capabilities in both technical and soft skills to keep pace with the strategic objectives of the federal government and the aspirations of the UAE towards achieving global leadership and competitiveness”.
Her Excellency confirmed that federal entities that choose to be part of this initiative will have unlimited access to the Coursera platform, with learning programs specifically curated to meet their in-house needs. In addition, HR officials will have access to Coursera’s unique analytics to track learner’s skill development, measure utilisation, and benchmark their skills against other governments and industries globally.
According to Her Excellency, this partnership will support self-paced online learning by allowing employees to learn from world-class international universities and highly qualified global professors. Coursera offers more than 5,200 upskilling and reskilling courses and 2,200 hands-on projects produced by 250 of the top universities and industry partners in the world. Courses focus on critical leadership and technical skills such as digital transformation, data science, artificial intelligence, IT, finance, marketing, and more.
For its part, Coursera indicated that it seeks to facilitate the learning process, as it provides training programs in Arabic for more than 2,000 training courses. It is expected that its Arabic language courses will increase significantly following its recent partnership with "FAHR", Khalifa University and other prestigious universities in the Middle East.
The COVID-19 pandemic and the fourth industrial revolution has made upskilling government employees fundamental to the continuous development and competitiveness of the UAE regionally and globally. Coursera aims to collaborate with government entities to close skills gaps and enhance their knowledge economy.