A young prince wants to make Saudi Arabia more fun
JIDDAH, Saudi Arabia: In a country where cinemas are banned and even Starbucks are segregated by gender, a powerful young prince is pushing a plan to create jobs for women and a more integrated and satisfying social life for a youthful population long straitjacketed by oppressive cultural norms.
The expansive effort aims to overhaul and diversify Saudi Arabia’s oil-dependent economy and modernise a restless culture in which women make up just 22 per cent of the workforce and nearly two-thirds of the population is under 30.
That means most Saudis have never lived in a society that places much value on fun and entertainment - the kind of world they see when they travel abroad. And that’s a world they seem to crave: Saudis spend more than US$5 billion (RM23 billion) a year on overseas leisure travel.
“We want to be normal like anywhere else,” said Nouf alOsaimi, 29, a scuba diving instructor who was gearing up for a dive at Dream Beach, a few miles north of this Red Sea port. Osaimi hopes to open her own dive school and thinks the government’s goals will make that easier for her and other female entrepreneurs. “The world is moving forward, and we need to keep up.”
The Vision 2030 plan, the most dramatic and far-reaching set of changes for the Saudi economy and society in decades, is being driven by Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. King
The expansive effort aims to overhaul and diversify Saudi Arabia’s oil-dependent economy and modernise a restless culture in which women make up just 22 per cent of the workforce and nearly two-thirds of the population is under 30.
Salman’s outspoken 31-year-old son has emerged as a remarkably influential leader since his father took the crown two years ago.
Mohammed met with President Trump at the White House in March, and the two are expected to see each other again when Trump visits the kingdom this weekend. Unlike many highprofile members of the royal family, the prince was educated in Saudi Arabia, not at elite universities in the West, which young people here said gives his demands even more credibility.
“We are the same generation, and we speak the same language,” said Fatimah alSani, 29, a woman who works at Uturn Entertainment, a Jiddah company that produces YouTube videos and is planning to expand under Vision 2030.
In this country of 32 million people, the main entertainment options are shopping malls, cafes and restaurants that are still largely segregated. While men and women have been allowed to mingle more freely in public in recent years, there are relatively few museums or other venues for them to do that.
Prince Mohammed has said that people will be more productive workers if they are happier in their leisure time.
“We have a lot of weekends in the year, so we need options,” said Amr al-Madani, a top official of the General Entertainment Authority, which was created under Vision 2030 to license, arrange and sometimes finance cultural events. “People work hard, and they need to reenergise.”
Since November, Madani said his group has supported more than 100 events in 21 cities, including art and food festivals, the Arab World’s first YouTube Fanfest, a ComicCon convention, and a US-style “monster jam,” with huge trucks with big wheels in a Riyadh soccer stadium attended by more than 25,000 people. It has even sponsored a handful of live music concerts, which have generally been banned.
More conservative members of Saudi society have complained that the prince is moving too fast. Madani noted that part of his job is to persuade people who are “intimidated” by what they fear will be an onslaught of Western-style entertainment with R-rated content.
He said the authority is being careful to support only events that are family-friendly and reflect “Saudi values.”
Although change comes slowly in this conservative kingdom, analysts here said Prince Mohammed clearly has the support of his 81-year-old father and the backing of much of the business community, which hopes to recapture some of the billions that Saudis spend vacationing overseas.
“It’s logic and common sense,” said Soraqa al-Khatib, an executive at Uturn, the online entertainment firm in Jiddah. “If we can create the right environment here, I can tap into that.”
One evening last week, Maha, 30, waited in line with her sister, Ranya, 28, and nearly 200 other people to attend a show at Al Comedy Club in Jiddah, the only stand-up comedy venue in the country.
Maha and Ranya said they spent thousands of dollars last fall to fly to Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates, to see a concert by the singer Yanni. “I would rather spend my money here, but there is nothing to do,” said Maha, a government payroll worker. “If we are just working all the time, what’s the point? We need things to do.”
They declined to give their last names because they did not tell their father they had gone to Abu Dhabi for the concert. Under Saudi law, women may not travel internationally without the permission of a male “guardian.”