Zain Group has launched the Zain Regulatory Academy in partnership with GSMA Advance, the mobile-industry trade body’s learning unit. The programme delivers accredited training to policy, regulatory, legal and compliance professionals across the operator’s eight markets in the Middle East and Africa, the company announced on 28 April from Kuwait.
Staff completing the programme earn the GSMA’s Best Practice in Public Policy and Regulatory Impact Accreditation. The curriculum blends self-paced online modules, expert-led seminars and practical assignments, with regional content on spectrum management, 5G evolution, the Internet of Things, mobile privacy, cybersecurity, competition policy and digital-age fintech.
What the academy covers
The Regulatory Academy sits within Zain’s Inclusion, Diversity and Equity University (IDEU), the corporate-learning unit the operator established with Spain’s IE University in 2023. Over the past three years IDEU has run digital-transformation programmes for some 2,000 employees, recording a 92% course pass rate, more than 800 active master’s students and over 100,000 training hours logged.
The new track is dedicated to staff handling regulatory questions raised by 5G rollouts, AI deployments, cloud services, the Internet of Things and data-driven business models.
How the partners frame it
“The Zain Regulatory Academy extends our people-first investment into a highly specialised capability area that is becoming increasingly central to the future sustainability of our industry,” said Dr Andrew Arowojolu, Zain Group’s Chief Regulatory Officer. He said the programme would strengthen “governance, alignment, and sustainable growth” as operating environments evolve.
Dr Drew MacFarlane, Head of GSMA Advance, said the deal reflected a broader recognition that regulatory complexity is rising alongside new technology. “As the regulatory landscape continues to evolve alongside new technologies and business models, organisations must ensure their teams are equipped not just with knowledge, but with validated, industry-recognised capabilities,” he said.
The African footprint
Zain Group operates in eight markets across the Middle East and Africa, with African operations forming part of that footprint. The markets covered face evolving telecoms-regulatory regimes shaped by spectrum policy, mobile-money rules and digital-identity frameworks.
The partnership extends GSMA’s broader Africa engagement, which this year already included a GSMA-Zindi AI safety challenge for African language models and a green innovation fund offering grants up to £200,000 for African mobile-sector startups. Operator-side regulatory training is one element of the wider capacity-building work the trade body undertakes alongside its policy advocacy.
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