Al-Azhar’s ‘AI Makken Nafsik’ program pushes AI literacy for Egyptian students

While this isn’t about a new model or datacenter, it’s a reminder that the race to AGI is also a race to build human capital. By encouraging Al‑Azhar students—many of whom will become religious and community leaders—to upskill via a national AI literacy program, Egypt is signalling that engagement, not abstention, will be its default stance toward AI. That matters in a country where debates over technology often intersect with questions of faith, ethics and social norms. ([newsroom.info](https://www.newsroom.info/351602?utm_source=openai))

For the broader ecosystem, initiatives like ‘AI Makken Nafsik’ point to a future where AI fluency is expected even outside technical or elite policy circles. If large segments of the global South build basic AI literacy early, they may be better positioned to demand systems that reflect local values and languages, rather than passively importing default settings from Silicon Valley or Shenzhen. In a world with AGI‑class systems, who understands enough to question, audit and redirect them will matter as much as who builds them.