Vision 2030 and the great social change
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman launches a plan to end dependence on oil and remake society; women drive from 2018, cinemas and concerts open, the clergy is reined in, and political dissent is crushed.
- Saudi Vision 2030 — Government of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (2016)
- MBS: The Rise to Power of Mohammed bin Salman — Ben Hubbard, Tim Duggan Books (2020)
- Labor force participation rate of Saudi females reaches 36.2% — General Authority for Statistics (GASTAT), Saudi Arabia (2024)
- Saudi Census 2022: Results — General Authority for Statistics (GASTAT), Saudi Arabia (2023)
- Saudi Arabia in Transition: Insights on Social, Political, Economic and Religious Change — Bernard Haykel, Thomas Hegghammer and Stéphane Lacroix (eds.), Cambridge University Press (2015)
When King Salman came to the throne in January 2015, his young son Mohammed bin Salman, barely thirty, was made defence minister and put in charge of the economy. Oil prices had collapsed the year before, and the old model, in which oil revenue paid for public-sector jobs for most citizens, looked unsustainable for a population in which most Saudis were under thirty.
- MBS: The Rise to Power of Mohammed bin Salman — Ben Hubbard, Tim Duggan Books (2020)
- Saudi Arabia in Transition: Insights on Social, Political, Economic and Religious Change — Bernard Haykel, Thomas Hegghammer and Stéphane Lacroix (eds.), Cambridge University Press (2015)
- Saudi Census 2022: Results — General Authority for Statistics (GASTAT), Saudi Arabia (2023)
The plan
On 25 April 2016 the government announced Vision 2030, a blueprint to diversify the economy: privatise part of Aramco (a small stake was floated in 2019), build up the Public Investment Fund, develop tourism, mining and entertainment, bring women into the workforce and launch giant projects such as NEOM on the Red Sea. In June 2017 Mohammed bin Salman replaced his cousin Mohammed bin Nayef as crown prince.
- Saudi Vision 2030 — Government of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (2016)
- MBS: The Rise to Power of Mohammed bin Salman — Ben Hubbard, Tim Duggan Books (2020)
A changed daily life
In April 2016 the religious police, the mutawwa’in of the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, lost the power to arrest. In 2017 the crown prince promised a return to “moderate Islam”. Women were allowed into football stadiums in January 2018, cinemas reopened in April 2018 after some 35 years, and on 24 June 2018 women began driving legally. In 2019 women over 21 gained the right to get a passport and travel without a male guardian’s permission, and the kingdom began issuing tourist visas. Concerts, mixed-gender restaurants and festivals that would have been unthinkable a decade earlier became normal.
- MBS: The Rise to Power of Mohammed bin Salman — Ben Hubbard, Tim Duggan Books (2020)
- Saudi Vision 2030 — Government of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (2016)
Women’s participation in the labour force rose quickly, reaching about 36% of Saudi women in 2024, and women now work as shop assistants, engineers, diplomats and soldiers.
- Labor force participation rate of Saudi females reaches 36.2% — General Authority for Statistics (GASTAT), Saudi Arabia (2024)
The iron fist
Political control tightened at the same pace. In September 2017 prominent clerics, including Salman al-Ouda, and intellectuals were detained. In November 2017 hundreds of princes, businessmen and officials were held in Riyadh’s Ritz-Carlton hotel in an anti-corruption campaign; the government said it recovered more than $100 billion in settlements, while critics called it a shakedown and a consolidation of power. In May 2018, weeks before the driving ban ended, women who had campaigned for the right to drive, among them Loujain al-Hathloul, were arrested; she was held for nearly three years.
- MBS: The Rise to Power of Mohammed bin Salman — Ben Hubbard, Tim Duggan Books (2020)
- Annex to the Report of the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions: Investigation into the unlawful death of Mr. Jamal Khashoggi (A/HRC/41/CRP.1) — Agnès Callamard, UN Human Rights Council (2019)
Hopes and doubts
Saudis often speak of these years with a mix of pride, excitement and caution. Many young people feel that, for the first time, the country is being run for them. Economists debate whether the megaprojects and the shift away from oil can deliver jobs; religious conservatives quietly mourn a lost world; and almost everyone has learned to be careful about what they say in public.
- MBS: The Rise to Power of Mohammed bin Salman — Ben Hubbard, Tim Duggan Books (2020)
- Saudi Arabia in Transition: Insights on Social, Political, Economic and Religious Change — Bernard Haykel, Thomas Hegghammer and Stéphane Lacroix (eds.), Cambridge University Press (2015)
Vision 2030 freed society from the grip of hardliners who had ruled daily life since 1979, opened jobs, entertainment and public space to women and young people, and is preparing the country for a future after oil. Strong leadership was needed to move this fast against entrenched resistance.
- Saudi Vision 2030 — Government of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (2016)
- MBS: The Rise to Power of Mohammed bin Salman — Ben Hubbard, Tim Duggan Books (2020)
Social reform has come with the harshest repression in the kingdom's modern history: women's rights activists jailed and allegedly tortured just as the driving ban was lifted, clerics, economists and ordinary Twitter users sentenced to decades in prison, executions at record levels, and power concentrated in one man.
- MBS: The Rise to Power of Mohammed bin Salman — Ben Hubbard, Tim Duggan Books (2020)
- Annex to the Report of the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions: Investigation into the unlawful death of Mr. Jamal Khashoggi (A/HRC/41/CRP.1) — Agnès Callamard, UN Human Rights Council (2019)
Many older and pious Saudis are uneasy at mixed concerts, the decline of the religious police and the sidelining of scholars, fearing the country is losing its Islamic character. Few say so publicly.
- MBS: The Rise to Power of Mohammed bin Salman — Ben Hubbard, Tim Duggan Books (2020)
- Awakening Islam: The Politics of Religious Dissent in Contemporary Saudi Arabia — Stéphane Lacroix, Harvard University Press (2011)
Why it matters today
For many Saudis, especially women and the young, daily life has changed more in a decade than in the previous forty years. Whether the economic transformation succeeds, and whether social openness can last alongside tighter political control, are the great questions hanging over the country.