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Good practice Imported

AI-Sana — Kazakhstan's National University AI Micro-Credentialing Program

Kazakhstan · Astana · See the Kazakhstan profile · See the Astana profile

Evidence: Descriptive / self-reported Top 56% 47/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

Kazakhstan's Ministry of Science and Higher Education issued 646,000+ AI micro-credentials to university students in the first stage of AI-Sana, a government-backed national program now expanding into intensive project-based stages with OpenAI, Google and NVIDIA.

646,000+ certificates
AI micro-credential certificates issued (Stage I) (2024-2026)
229 solutions
AI-based capstone solutions developed (2024-2026)
100,000 students
Students selected for Stage II
60,000 students
Students targeted for Stage III
1,500 ventures
Ventures targeted for Stage IV acceleration
AI-Sana — Kazakhstan's National University AI Micro-Credentialing Program

Details

Maturity
Scaling
Promoter
Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Republic of Kazakhstan (AI-Sana Program)
Period
December 2024 – ongoing
Keywords
higher education, AI skilling, government program, entrepreneurship

Context

On 11 December 2024, following the Astana Hub AI Demo Day, Kazakhstan's government launched AI-Sana, a multi-stage national programme run by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education (Vice Minister Dinara Shcheglova) to build AI competency across the university system and seed a domestic AI industry.

Objectives

Build broad AI literacy across public universities and progressively select students into more advanced, project-based and venture-building stages.

Activities

Free foundational AI courses were rolled out to public universities in Stage I. Stage II selected 100,000 students for an 8-week, 15-hour-per-week advanced curriculum designed with AI Council member Paul Kim, culminating in venture-plan capstones; Stage III targets 60,000 students building industry-linked projects, and Stage IV aims to accelerate 1,500 of those into market-ready ventures, supported by international partners including OpenAI, ETS, Google, NVIDIA, Coursera and Huawei.

Results

By early 2026, students had earned 646,000 AI micro-credential certificates and 229 AI-based capstone solutions had been developed by participating teams.

Conclusions

Independent analysis from The Diplomat (June 2026) cautions that AI-Sana's headline enrollment and certificate numbers do not by themselves demonstrate deep technical competency, and notes that a related 2025 digital-literacy campaign has published little on content quality or measured impact, underscoring that scale has outpaced independent evaluation.

Implementation
Indicative cost
High (€500k–€5M) — Large national government programme spanning four stages with multiple industry partnerships (OpenAI, Google, NVIDIA, Coursera, Huawei); no public per-student cost disclosed.
Time to results
Long (> 3 years) — Multi-stage rollout from December 2024 through a planned Stage IV, spanning roughly 2024-2029.
Staffing & skills
Ministry of Science and Higher Education of Kazakhstan (Vice Minister Dinara Shcheglova), National AI Council (incl. Paul Kim, curriculum design), International partners: OpenAI, ETS, Google, NVIDIA, Coursera, Huawei

Conditions for success

  • Free foundational courses at Stage I to build broad reach before selective advanced stages
  • Multiple international industry/education partners supporting rollout
  • Government mandate and funding across the university system

Common failure modes

  • Certificate/enrollment scale does not by itself demonstrate technical competency (per The Diplomat analysis)
  • Related national digital-literacy campaign has published little on content quality or measured impact

Commonly funded by

National / regional programmes

Indicative funding routes for practices of this type — always check each programme's current calls and eligibility rules.

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Data sources

Where this practice's information was retrieved from, and when.

Attachments

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