CNN Academy Abu Dhabi marks 5th anniversary of media training excellence

ABU DHABI / WAM

CNN Academy Abu Dhabi, hosted in partnership with Abu Dhabi’s Creative Media Authority (CMA), has marked five successful years of career-influencing operations. By the end of 2025, CNN Academy Abu Dhabi will have trained 165 young individuals from the local talent pool, including 93 Emiratis, since its establishment in 2021.
The private-public sector initiative provides students based in Abu Dhabi the opportunity to undertake an intensive course designed to empower and upskill the next generation of journalists in multiplatform storytelling. Each annual cycle, local participants are joined by international CNN Academy students from destinations including US, Malaysia, Hong Kong (special administrative region of China), Spain, Ireland, Iraq and Iraqi Kurdistan Region.
By the end of cycle five, more than 270 international students would have flown to Abu Dhabi to complete their academy training – ensuring international collaboration and unified thinking.
The pioneering training is led by more than 25 experts annually, including CNN’s anchors, correspondents and technical specialists from around the world. By the close of 2025, the experts will have taught 725 of training hours, comprising of 100 special sessions and masterclasses alongside studio-based learning and online training. All students — past and present — have a lifetime access to the CNN Academy’s online hub which offers a wealth of self-paced online courses, access to live-streamed masterclasses from across the world and access to many learning resources.
Mohamed Dobay, Acting Director-General of Creative Media Authority, said, “This is a milestone for CNN Academy Abu Dhabi and our partnership with the CNN media brand, and we are extremely proud to have collaborated successfully for five years.” After our fifth cycle concludes in November 2025, we will have shaped the careers of 436 young talented students including 271 visiting international students alongside 165 local participants.
Securing the future talent of journalism in the nation continues to be a measure of success for the wider creative industries and we look forward to not only continuing but building on the momentum and success established in this first half-decade.”
In 2025, the curated theme of CNN Academy Abu Dhabi will be Community Storytelling which has been selected to support the official Year of Community in the UAE. The 2025 cohort, who will start their studies in mid-September, will no doubt hope to secure permanent employment or internships within the creative industries of Abu Dhabi – following in the footsteps of 33 students.
Becky Anderson, Managing Editor of CNN Abu Dhabi and anchor of Connect the World with Becky Anderson, said, “It feels entirely appropriate that we should be marking the fifth year of CNN Academy by celebrating the importance of Community Storytelling. In so many ways, the story of CNN Academy itself has been about community – whether that is uplifting the community of young storytellers here in the region or bringing others here to Abu Dhabi from all over the world to create a new and enduring international community of journalists and content creators. We’re incredibly proud of all our graduates and grateful for the unstinting support of our partners. We cannot wait to welcome the new cohort to CNN Academy later this year.”
In 2024, as a milestone first, CMA announced that CNN Academy Abu Dhabi would partner with Higher Colleges of Technology (HCT) to provide academic assessment and course merits for students – bridging the gap between education and private sector for the benefit of students and their fledgling careers into media. The team will continue to seek additional educational institutional partnerships for the benefit of academy participants in Abu Dhabi, supported by a plan to host a dedicated CNN Academy Abu Dhabi careers’ fair, as part of a wider programme schedule.
Since 2023, the initiative has also provided special training sessions to select government employees in Abu Dhabi, totalling 139 individuals from 30 different entities by the end of 2025. This unique and extensive training experience provides essential journalism skills including visual and audio storytelling, newsroom roles, fact-checking methods, interviewing techniques, mobile and digital storytelling, deadline management and breaking news workflows before the students undertake a final Simulation Week experience, joined by other international CNN Academy students, where their skills are applied in a real-time newsroom scenario under the watchful eye of CNN’s experts. Open to students with a passion for storytelling and journalism who are fresh graduates from 2023 and 2024 or undergraduates in the fourth year, this year’s cohort will attend masterclasses from experts representing community-focused entities – continuing the calibre of previous cohort masterclasses and sessions which were led by foremost creative, digital and executive leaders under the cohort themes which have previously included topics of AI and Cyber Security and Climate Storytelling.
Aysha Al Jneibi, Director of Talent Management at Creative Media Authority, said, “This year we are aligning CNN Academy Abu Dhabi’s annual changing theme with the Year of Community to ensure we deliver impactful training around stories which really affect our local and global community. I am looking forward to witnessing a fresh group of fervent students upskill and springboard their forthcoming journalism and storytelling careers through one of our many established talent management initiatives.”
Applications for 2025-26 cohort are now open online at CNN Academy website https://www.cma.gov.ae/cnn-academy and will close 30th June 2025.