Academia to industry job search burnout?

Hello, I am a 2020 graduate that has been in academia for 4 years during which I finished my master’s in Explainable AI. My master’s was research based so I didn’t take any courses.

I decided that I don’t want to pursue a phd and head to industry so I resigned my teaching assistant job to solidify my skills.

Everything changed since I last graduated, alot of emerging and new technology. After looking into various aspects, I realized I need to be a good SWE before being an AI/ML engineer (not sure if it’s true).

The idea is that I am mainly interested in AI/ML, however, my portfolio only has my master’s project. Moreover, I am currently residing in Egypt where there exists very few postings on AI, not only that but also, the 4 years in academia is not helping my case in industry. I want to strengthen my technical skills in SWE and AI but I cannot even land an internship because 1- there doesn’t exist any in AI, 2- I am overqualified to be a SWE intern.

Solo projects aren’t enough since I need insights from more experienced people to guide me. I started looking into remote opportunities since relocating is not an option for me but I am not really having any success so far in getting a response.

I really need your advice on what to do, also if you can guide me to the best options for remote opportunities (AI internships, AI swe etc), I will highly appreciate.

This job search is really burning me out and I am currently unemployed which makes the situation far more stressful.