Replit and Arabic.AI Launch Free Arabic Coding Courses for MENA Innovators

Arabic.AI has teamed up with Replit, the developer platform led by Amjad Masad, to roll out free coding courses fully translated into Arabic for learners across the MENA region. In simple terms, Replit’s hands-on programming content is now available in Arabic, start to finish, through Arabic.AI Academy — and yes, without a price tag.

This is being described as Replit’s first full educational localisation into Arabic, a move that feels spot on given the numbers. More than 400 million people speak Arabic worldwide, yet when it comes to high-quality software and AI education in the language, options have been thin on the ground. I’ve seen this gap first-hand over the years, around hackathons and early-stage founders who had the ideas but struggled with English-heavy tools. It can be a bit of a faff, to say the least.

The partnership is spearheaded by Nour Al Hassan, founder and CEO of Arabic.AI and also Tarjama, the UAE-based AI company known for building Arabic-first language technologies for governments and large organisations. Before Arabic.AI even existed, Al Hassan spent over 16 years growing Tarjama from a bootstrapped translation shop into a profitable tech business, laying down a substantial Arabic data foundation along the way. That groundwork later powered Pronoia, Tarjama’s large language model focused on Arabic.

Tarjama’s momentum picked up further in May 2025, when it closed a $15 million Series A round led by Global Ventures, with backing from Wamda Capital, TA Ventures, Phaze Ventures, Golden Gate Ventures and Endeavor Catalyst. The company has said its Pronoia model outperformed several global peers on Arabic-specific tasks and has since been adopted by enterprise and government clients in more than 30 markets.

Arabic.AI builds on that same base, but with a clear educational slant. Its Academy leans heavily on “learning by building”, guiding users from basic coding through to practical, production-ready applications using Replit’s development environment. And believe it or not, that practical angle is what many founders around the region keep asking for, not another theory-heavy course that gathers dust.

“Language should never be a barrier to opportunity,” Replit CEO Amjad Masad said, noting that the collaboration helps Arabic-speaking developers work with the same tools and resources as their peers elsewhere.

On the flip side, education is only part of the picture. Arabic.AI is also scaling its Agentic Studio, a no-code and low-code platform for creating AI agents in Arabic and English. The pitch is clear: learn the skills, then deploy them straight into real products. I reckon that end-to-end thinking is what makes this more than just another online course launch, even if it definately won’t solve the region’s tech skills gap overnight, you know?

For readers around Arageek who care about startups and talent development in MENA, this feels like a small but meaningful step — the kind that quietly opens doors rather than banging on them. And in this space, that’s no small thing.

🚀 Got exciting news to share?

If you're a startup founder, VC, or PR agency with big updates—funding rounds, product launches 📢, or company milestones 🎉 — AraGeek English wants to hear from you!

✉️ Send Us Your Story 👇

https://en.arageek.com/send-us-your-story-or-a-news-tip