Rana El Kadi

Jordanian edtech pioneer expanding STEM education access for Arab girls

Rana El Kadi is a Jordanian entrepreneur whose 2019 startup Safarnama has become the leading platform for Arabic-language STEM education. Her platform's interactive courses, available in both Arabic and English, have reached over 500,000 students across 20 Arab countries by 2024. Recognizing the gender gap in tech fields - only 12% of Arab women work in STEM - she developed the "Girls Code the Future" initiative providing free coding bootcamps for refugee and rural girls. In 2022, Safarnama partnered with UNESCO to create the first Arabic AI curriculum approved for use in Jordanian schools. El Kadi also founded the Marsad Observatory to track digital literacy rates in MENA, revealing that her programs increased girls' tech enrollment by 47% in partner schools. Her work was highlighted in the 2023 UN Women report "EdTech as a Catalyst for Gender Equality" and earned her the 2023 MIT Arab Woman Innovator Award. In 2024, she launched the first Arabic-speaking hackathon for female students from conflict zones, attracting 1,200 participants from Syria, Yemen and Sudan.