AI for Citizens — UNDP and Intel's Digital Ambassador Network Brings AI Literacy to Rural Lesotho

In March 2025 Lesotho's UNDP office signed an MoU with Intel to expand AI literacy in rural, low-connectivity communities, part of a wider UNDP-Intel partnership that also covers Liberia.

The programme aims to spread foundational AI awareness into areas formal digital-skills programmes often miss, aligned with Lesotho's national target of universal digital access by 2030.

UNDP and Intel set up 40 Digital Skills Learning Labs and trained 40 Digital Ambassadors -- teachers, religious leaders and other trusted local figures -- to deliver Intel's offline, game-based 'AI for Citizens' curriculum using storytelling and analogue puzzles that do not require reliable internet. The wider Community Digital Inclusion Model also converted school computer labs into after-hours community learning centres equipped with donated desktops and tablets.

Public Eye News reported the first week of the wider digital-inclusion rollout targeted 1,500 community members, though this figure describes the broader CDIM programme rather than AI-literacy training specifically, and no learning-outcome data for the AI content itself has been published.

At the time of reporting, the initiative was only months old with a single 40-person ambassador cohort, so its reach and effectiveness at scale remain unproven.