The future is bright: Coding the way for One Million Arab Coders
The Challenge
The “One Million Arab Coders” (OMAC) initiative was launched to address a critical regional gap: limited access to high-quality coding education and digital economy skills across the Arab world. Its mission was to make coding accessible to all by offering free, structured learning paths for beginners through advanced learners, empowering individuals to participate in the rapidly evolving digital economy.
We were entrusted with full ownership of the media investment and challenged to achieve ambitious enrollment targets, recognizing that traditional, brand-led paid media alone would not be sufficient to drive the required scale.
The Strategy
Our strategy was inspired by a powerful precedent.
Roughly 15 years ago, coding captured the cultural imagination in the United States. Silicon Valley emerged as a global symbol of innovation, propelled not only by technological breakthroughs but by its prominence in mainstream media. Coders became aspirational figures, celebrated through cultural moments such as the rise of visionary founders like Mark Zuckerberg and Steve Jobs, and reinforced through popular media portrayals.
This cultural shift shaped our thinking.
How could we create the same sense of aspiration and cultural relevance for coders across the Arab world, this time through social media?
Over three years, we designed and executed a people-centric influencer strategy that amplified the initiative’s message across social media at scale.
We pioneered a then-unconventional model: amplifying creator-led content directly from their own accounts using paid media, preserving authenticity while significantly extending reach and performance.
We strategically allocated 55% of the budget to creators, with the remaining investment focused on paid amplification and remarketing.
The program partnered with over 100 carefully selected influencers, including cultural figures, entrepreneurial voices, successful program graduates, and technology experts.
Creators were chosen using our proprietary performance metrics, such as iScore, to maximize engagement quality and drive meaningful enrollment outcomes.
Our budget approach prioritized creator-driven organic enrollments, supported by targeted paid amplification to build awareness, improve cost efficiency, and sustain enrollment growth over time.
This integrated model ensured both cultural relevance and measurable performance, delivering impact at scale.
The Results
On March 15, 2021, the program reached a historic milestone with its one-millionth enrollment, successfully fulfilling its mission to empower one million Arabs with coding skills.
The campaign created a domino effect of positivity, progress, and success as OMAC enabled this progress and democratized coding for the average individual: learn to code and the world will open to you.
Participants gained the technical capabilities needed to access opportunities in the digital economy, as freelancers, entrepreneurs, and contributors to startups and innovation-driven organizations.
Our influencer-led strategy played a critical role in achieving this scale efficiently, reducing the Cost per Enrollment to just $1.07.
The measurable success of this approach, and the clear impact of creator-driven engagement, prompted Dubai Future Foundation leadership to deepen its investment in the creator economy through initiatives such as Visioneers and Creators HQ, further cementing creators as a cornerstone of future growth and innovation.
