It’s estimated that 10,000 data solution architects will be needed across Bahrain in the next five years, and Amazon Web Services Inc. is working to help fill the void with its Educate program, a global initiative to provide students and educators with the resources needed to accelerate cloud-related learning. In fact, 2,300 young Bahrainis signed up for the Educate program.

And, recently, the Ministry of Youth and Sports Affairs signed an MoU with AWS to provide Bahraini youth with on-the-job training on cloud technologies. Specifically, the program, called “Opportunities,” will provide Bahraini youngsters with training opportunities in AWS offices in Bahrain, as well as other locations.

His Excellency H.E. Aymen Tawfiq Almoayed (pictured, left), minister of youth and sports affairs, and Max Peterson (pictured, right), vice president of international sales for the worldwide public sector at Amazon Web Services, spoke with John Furrier (@furrier), host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the AWS Summit Bahrain event. They discussed the ongoing partnership between Bahrain and the AWS Educate program, as well as the internship program with Bahrain’s youth (see the full interview with transcript here). (* Disclosure below.)

[Editor’s note: The following has been condensed for clarity.]

Furrier: This program you’re doing with Amazon … I want to unpack it, because it speaks to the bigger picture of how the region is shaped by its generational shift of cloud computing and the people here. This is a really big part of this modernization plan.

Almoayed: No question. So the program that the government adopted, Vision 2030 … is based on one … key premise. That the government is going to move from operator to regulator, and our focus would be to focus on and … create … an open, just, competitive environment. So the idea is for us to provide the platform and then allow the meritocratic system to let those that can aspire to opportunities and reach these opportunities come up through the system. So this program really sets the stage to get a new level going.

Furrier: Explain the difference with this program and why it’s different than some of the things we’ve been hearing. We saw a cloud computing degree coming out of the University of Bahrain. Can you give a more detail around how it works?

Almoayed: What we’re doing is we’re looking at very quick wins. This [on-the-job training] is not an extended degree. It’s an opportunity to interact with the best of the best in their world sector. Somebody that spends a year with Amazon, I think that something happens to the pulse rate. So your pulse literally starts to beat much faster. We hear about their traveling patterns, and that in itself is amazing. So the reason [the internship is] different from a degree is it gives you real-life vocational experience. It gives you the networking opportunity. It gives you the lifestyle exposure. And then it gives you the shortcuts in organization.

Furrier: Max, what’s your take on this? Because obviously you’re on the Amazon side. You’re taking them in Amazon Web Services here in Bahrain, or is it outside corporate headquarters in Seattle? 

Peterson: First, we’re excited to be the first company that is partnered with the Ministry on this effort. We’re sure many others are going to join, but we’re excited to be first. I think what makes it different is the aspect of experiential. There’s a lot of experiential learning that’s going on different than the academic learning. Equally or maybe even more necessary is the sort of organizational cultural learning. Just what does it take to operate at world scale or at pace? And then to be able to bring that back to the region. We’ll do that wherever we’ve got the right mix of skills. So it could be in Bahrain — where we’ve got a big office now — it could be in London, could be Washington, D.C., could be Seattle.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the AWS Summit Bahrain event. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the AWS Summit Bahrain event. Neither Amazon Web Services Inc., the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE