Saudi Arabia recently launched Ignite, a new program for digital content creation and production, in a series of new investments and support for next generation connectivity and communications infrastructure. The latest round of announcements was made on day two of LEAP22, a global technology platform taking place in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Ignite aims to triple digital content market size in gaming, audio, video and advertising. The program is backed by a Ksh. 125 billion (USD 1.1 billion) investment. It will include incentives including financial support for local, regional and international companies and start-ups, infrastructure development, talent development programs and improved policy and regulations to enable the sector to grow rapidly. This is part of Saudi Arabia’s plans to accelerate its digital ecosystem and leverage its position in the Middle East and North Africa region to become a leading international digital economy.
The program aims to create a comprehensive ecosystem which will attract digital content companies and grow media production and content creation sector. This is in turn expected to pave way for the Kingdom to become a leading digital entertainment and media production hub.
To further attract local and international partners to Ignite, Saudi Arabia will also enhance intellectual property protection measures. International and local partners will be able to benefit from an investor’s ‘one stop shop’ that will streamline the process for investment into the Saudi digital content economy.
Additionally, the Kingdom announced the launch of WiFi 6E, supported by the largest amount of spectrum available for WiFi of any country worldwide. The combination of state-of-the-art technology and record amount of spectrum will allow Saudi Arabia to benefit from the fastest achievable WiFi speeds globally (2.4 Gbps).
Moreover, Trend Micro announced the opening of its regional Middle East and Africa (MEA) headquarters in Riyadh, a security data lake, and other investments in Saudi Arabia totaling over Ksh. 5.7 billion (USD 50 million). The investments aim to amplify Trend Micro’s continued commitment to protect public and private organizations in the Kingdom and across the entire region.
Trend Micro announced a cybersecurity Software as a Service (SaaS) data lake for cloud security, endpoint security, network security and extended detection and response solutions. This demonstrates commitment to serve the country and the entire region as the first global cybersecurity company to launch its MEA HQ and a local cloud data lake inside Saudi Arabia.