African Women in Tech and AI (AWITAI) — UNESCO's Continent-Wide AI Upskilling and Incubation Programme

African Women in Tech and AI (AWITAI) is a three-year project (2023-2025), funded at $500,000 by Morocco's OCP Foundation, jointly implemented by UNESCO and Ai Movement, the AI centre of Mohammed VI Polytechnic University, with the goal of training and supporting 150 African women entrepreneurs interested in AI.
In its 2023 pilot phase, 34 women scientists from 11 African countries received training and support, including an online course and a summer camp at the Ai Movement Centre in Rabat.
In 2024, a second cohort of 80 women entrepreneurs from 28 African countries across all five African regions completed a three-month online course covering strategic foresight applied to AI, AI project management, leadership, start-up development and market research, followed by a two-week in-person summer camp (1-13 July 2024) at the Ai Movement Centre; the curriculum also included AI leadership and ethics. A jury of UNESCO, Ai Movement and OCP Foundation representatives then selected 15 of the 80 women for special funding and incubation support, with projects spanning agriculture, health, education, disaster risk reduction, water management, sustainable energy, gender equity and web accessibility.
By the end of 2024, a cumulative 114 women had been trained across both cohorts, with 36 more planned for 2025 to reach the 150-woman target, alongside a stated aim of building a continent-wide network of women in AI.
Caveat: no independent, third-party evaluation of the incubated start-ups' survival, revenue or job-creation outcomes has been published; all figures reported here come from the implementing partners (UNESCO, Ai Movement, OCP Foundation) rather than an external evaluator.

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