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

On 11 December 2024, following the Astana Hub AI Demo Day, Kazakhstan's government launched AI-Sana, a multi-stage national program 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.
Free foundational AI courses were rolled out to Kazakhstan's public universities in Stage I; by early 2026 the ministry reported that students had earned 646,000 AI micro-credential certificates, alongside 229 AI-based capstone solutions developed by participating teams.
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. International partners including OpenAI (educator-training integration), ETS (national testing reform), Google, NVIDIA, Coursera and Huawei support the rollout.
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 million-citizen digital-literacy campaign has published little public information on content quality or measured impact — underscoring that scale has outpaced independent evaluation.

Read the full analysis: https://aisana.gov.kz/