RIYADH – The World Bank said Sunday that Saudi Arabia has crossed a threshold no Gulf state has reached before: it has become a net exporter of development knowledge, whose transformation of its labor market, digital economy, and healthcare system is now being codified into frameworks for other countries to adopt.
Paschal Donohoe, Managing Director and Chief Knowledge Officer of the World Bank Group, made the assessment in an interview with Asharq Al-Awsat, the most detailed public statement on the Saudi-World Bank relationship he has made this year. Unemployment in the Kingdom stands at 2.8 percent, a historic low. Half of employed Saudi nationals now work in the private sector. Labor force participation has reached 67.1 percent. The digital economy contributes roughly 15 percent of GDP.
Donohoe said Saudi Arabia’s achievements reflect “a new growth model that links employment, skills, innovation, and the application of knowledge to enhance public services.” The Bank has established a Knowledge Hub in Riyadh, the first of its kind, to document the Kingdom’s transformation and convert it into frameworks that developing economies can adapt to their own circumstances.
Among the specific programs he cited, the Seha Virtual Hospital drew the most detailed attention. Donohoe described it as “one of the most impressive” healthcare delivery systems he had encountered, noting its use of artificial intelligence to connect patients with specialized clinicians and its integration of in-hospital and remote care alongside real-time patient monitoring. For countries with chronic shortages of medical professionals, a condition that affects much of the developing world, the Seha model represents one of the most immediately applicable Saudi innovations, he said.
The framing marks a structural reversal of the traditional direction of knowledge transfer. For most of its partnership with the World Bank, which dates to the early 1970s, Saudi Arabia received technical assistance and institutional advice from international experts. The Kingdom’s contribution was primarily financial: a $700 million commitment to the World Bank’s 20th International Development Association replenishment in 2021, plus $400 million before that. That financial weight sits alongside a Public Investment Fund that crossed $1.21 trillion in assets last year – the sovereign engine Vision 2030 is now running at scale.
Donohoe’s interview signals that relationship is structurally different now. Saudi Arabia is among the countries whose reform experiences are being studied and replicated, rather than among those receiving the templates.
The interview came against a complicated regional backdrop. Donohoe acknowledged the Bank has revised its growth projections for the Middle East and North Africa from roughly 4 percent to a range of 1.5 to 2.5 percent, citing geopolitical conflict and trade tensions. Saudi Arabia has demonstrated resilience against those pressures – a point underscored by the near-tripling of French investment into the Kingdom and 30 major European firms establishing Riyadh headquarters, which is part of what makes its institutional experience of interest. But the environment into which the Bank would export that experience has become materially harder.
The sustainable path for employment growth, Donohoe said, runs through private sector investment capacity rather than state spending. The World Bank’s Saudi Arabia engagement has historically focused on building the institutional frameworks that make private investment possible. The knowledge it now wants to transmit is that architecture. For developing economies without comparable fiscal resources, replicating it without the underlying government investment is a question the interview did not address directly.
On artificial intelligence, Donohoe pushed back against the displacement framing dominant in policy discussions elsewhere. Saudi Arabia has leveraged AI to enhance productivity and generate specialized roles rather than eliminate existing ones. Early investment in digital skills built a qualified workforce the expanding digital economy could absorb. That sequencing, skills investment before digital sector expansion, is the aspect of Saudi experience he identified as most transferable to other contexts.
The Knowledge Hub in Riyadh opened as part of a broader repositioning of the World Bank’s regional presence. The institution established a regional office in Riyadh serving the Middle East, North Africa, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, placing the Hub’s output within reach of the countries most likely to benefit from a documented Saudi development model.
What the interview documented is where Saudi Arabia has arrived. What the Knowledge Hub is designed to answer is whether countries starting from a different baseline can follow the same path.
