During His Visit to KACST
Prince Faisal Bin Salaman Emphasizes the Importance of Collaborating efforts of the Concerned Institutions in the Kingdom to Enrich the Arabic Content on the Internet
 

Prince Faisel Bin Salaman Bin AbdulAziz, the Chairman of Saudi Research &Marketing Group, emphasized the Importance of Collaborating efforts of scientific, academic and media institutions besides private sector institutions in the Kingdom to foster and enrich the Arabic Content on the Internet qualitatively and quantitatively.
His Royal Highness lauded KACST efforts in this respect through supervising King Abdullah initiative for the Arabic Content during his meeting with Dr. Mohammed Ibrahim Al-Suwaiyel, KACST President, in his office in  KACST headquarters in Riyadh yesterday.
The prince praised the roles and tasks KACST carry out in the sector of science and technology in the kingdom in general through executing programs and projects of the National Comprehensive Plan of Science, Technology and Innovations that target placing the kingdom among advanced countries.
 Dr. Al-Suwaiyel welcomed his Royal Highness and accompanying delegation and pointed out that statistics indicated weakness of the Arabic informative content on the internet as its percentage does not exceed 0, 5 while the English informative content of the internet amounts to 68, 8%. Consequently, various initiatives were launched to enrich the Arabic content on the internet with King Abdullah initiative for the Arabic Content on top of them.
During the meeting, a presentation about the initiative for the Arabic content on the internet was given by Dr. Mohammed Al-Kanhal, the Supervisor of KACST Computer and Electronics Research Institute.  Dr. Al-Kanhal pointed out that among distinguished targets of the initiative supervised by KACST, are preserving the Arabic heritage and identity; boosting the presence of Arabic Language on the internet in addition to enabling all segments of the Arabic society to deal with information with their language, so as to bridge the digital gap which by its turn would allow all members of the society to generate knowledge.

Prince Faisel and the accompanying delegation listened into a brief presentation about “IKraa Campaign”, presented by Mr. Mansour Ben Sahw Alotaibi, manager of KACST Media Center, during which he talked about objectives of the campaign, the importance and role of books in enriching knowledge. Mr. Alotaibi stressed the importance of the participation of all members of the society in this campaign because it is a national project. He also indicated that KACST intends to carry out and launch this campaign  on the largest scale in the coming period with aim of spreading the scientific awareness among all members of the society and helping them to develop the habit of broad reading at all times.

Then the two sides discussed means of boosting cooperation between KACST and Saudi Research & Marketing Group that enables achieving targets and aspirations for spreading awareness of scientific issues among members of the society and acquainting them with the importance of science and technology sector and its role in achieving the comprehensive development.