Girls Code Mongolia — AI Academy Asia's Coding and AI Curriculum for Nomadic and Disadvantaged Girls

Girls Code was founded in Mongolia in 2021 by Bolor-Erdene Battsengel — later Mongolia's State Secretary for Digital Development — to give girls aged 14-18 from nomadic herding and other disadvantaged communities a route into coding and, through the affiliated AI Academy Asia curriculum, applied AI skills. The programme responds to a stark rural-urban digital divide: many participants grow up moving with livestock across the steppe, far from Ulaanbaatar's schools and internet access.
Training combines coding fundamentals, AI Academy Asia's AI modules, and English/communication skills, delivered through bootcamps and ongoing mentoring. The programme is explicitly disability-inclusive: World Economic Forum reporting profiles participant Enkhmend Davaajav, a hearing-impaired 15-year-old from Ulaanbaatar, supported by a peer mentor fluent in sign language.
As of 2024-2025 reporting, more than 110-120 girls have graduated. Girls Code and independent press (World Economic Forum, CNN Business) report that 90% of graduates go on to STEM majors, with some admitted to Harvard, MIT and Cambridge on scholarship; others work as part-time coders to fund their studies and support their families, and several have won national coding competitions. AI Academy Asia's parallel initiative aims to train 500 teachers to extend AI education to rural communities.
These outcome figures come from the NGO and its press coverage rather than an independent, peer-reviewed evaluation, and the programme's reach (roughly 100-120 girls to date) is small relative to Mongolia's national student population; no control group or comparison cohort has been published.

Read the full analysis: https://www.weforum.org/stories/2024/10/girls-code-mongolia-digital-divide/