There are over 450 million Arabic speakers worldwide. Arabic is the fifth most spoken language on the planet, the official language of 26 countries, and the primary language of instruction in hundreds of engineering programs across the Middle East and North Africa. Yet when I searched YouTube for power systems educational content in Arabic last month, I found fewer than 50 videos of any meaningful quality.
For comparison, searching the same topics in English yields tens of thousands of results. Hindi power systems content runs into the thousands. Even smaller language communities like Turkish and Korean have hundreds of dedicated channels. Arabic, the language of a region undergoing one of the most ambitious energy transformations in history, is virtually absent from the global knowledge-sharing ecosystem.
The Cost of This Gap
This is not merely an inconvenience. It is a structural barrier to engineering education and professional development across the Arab world. Consider the typical electrical engineering student at a Saudi, Egyptian, or Jordanian university. Their textbooks are in English. Their lectures may be in Arabic, but their reference materials, simulation tutorials, and supplementary content are overwhelmingly in English.
For students with strong English proficiency, this works reasonably well. But language proficiency is not uniformly distributed. Many talented students struggle not with the engineering concepts themselves but with accessing those concepts through a second language. They understand Kirchhoff's laws perfectly when explained in Arabic. They can solve load flow problems. But when they need to learn MATLAB, ETAP, or PSS/E from English-only tutorials, a linguistic barrier compounds the technical learning curve.
The Opportunity
The Arab world is investing hundreds of billions of dollars in energy infrastructure. Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030 alone includes massive smart grid deployments, renewable energy installations, and nuclear power development. The UAE, Egypt, Jordan, and Morocco are all pursuing aggressive clean energy targets. These projects require tens of thousands of skilled power systems engineers.
Yet we have almost no Arabic-language content ecosystem to support their training. This represents an enormous opportunity for educators, content creators, and institutions willing to fill the gap.
What would a comprehensive Arabic power systems content library look like? I envision several layers:
Foundational Courses
Complete university-level courses in power systems analysis, electrical machines, power electronics, and protection systems. Delivered in Arabic with English technical terminology introduced and explained. These would serve undergraduate students across the MENA region.
Software Tutorials
Step-by-step tutorials for industry-standard tools: ETAP, PSS/E, DIgSILENT PowerFactory, PSCAD, and MATLAB/Simulink for power systems. Currently, an Arab engineer wanting to learn ETAP must either find an English tutorial or learn by trial and error. This is wasteful and unnecessary.
Industry Practice Guides
Practical content on Saudi Electricity Company standards, Gulf Cooperation Council grid codes, and regional regulatory frameworks. This localized knowledge is rarely documented in any language, let alone Arabic.
Research Communication
Summaries of recent research papers and breakthroughs, explained in Arabic for practicing engineers who do not have time to read dense English-language journals. Making research accessible is as important as conducting it.
Why Academics Must Lead
In the English-speaking world, much of the best technical content on YouTube comes from academics. Professors like those behind channels with millions of subscribers have shown that university-quality education can reach global audiences through digital platforms. The Arab world needs its own versions of these educators.
University professors are uniquely positioned to create this content. We have the technical depth. We have pedagogical training. We have institutional support. What we often lack is the recognition that content creation is a legitimate and impactful form of scholarly contribution, on par with journal publications.
I would argue it is more impactful. A journal paper may be read by a few hundred researchers. A well-made Arabic power systems video series could reach hundreds of thousands of students and engineers across 26 countries.
My Commitment
This is why I have begun developing a comprehensive Arabic power systems content library. The first series will cover power flow analysis, from the fundamentals of bus admittance matrices through Newton-Raphson iteration to practical implementation in ETAP. Each video will be delivered in Arabic with bilingual terminology, so students learn the Arabic concepts while building their English technical vocabulary.
The content will be freely available. Knowledge should not be gated by language or economics. If we are serious about building a skilled energy workforce for the Arab world's energy transition, we must invest in the educational infrastructure that makes this possible.
450 million speakers deserve more than 50 videos. Let us close this gap.