AI Council

AI Council of Tajikistan

Under the Ministry of Industry and New Technologies

Azizjon Azimi

Chairman of AI Council of Tajikistan

Who We Are: AIC

Artificial Intelligence Council (AIC) is a public body under the Ministry of Industry and New Technologies
AIC's goal: implementation of Tajikistan's National AI Strategy(NAIS)
AIC members include leading local companies
Honorary Chair: Minister of Industry and New Technologies H.E. Sherali Kabir
Chair: Azizjon Azimi

Our story

2020

AI Academy pilot with Stanford curriculum

2021

Master's thesis at Harvard outlining an AI vision for Tajikistan to avoid 'middle-income trap'

2022

50 AI Academy graduates get employed

a local AI company - zypl.ai begins global expansion of its AI SaaS for financial institutions with an AI Academy talent base

2023

A local company won the prestigious "AI Startup of the Year" award at the 2023 Digital Bridge Awards

AI major introduced in 5 Universities of Tajikistan

2024

Launch of the hackathon ’Disruptive DataHack’

Our team

Dr. Akhlitdin Nizomitdinov

Deputy Chair of AI Council

PhD in Statistics from Anadolu University (Turkey)

15 years at PITTU (one of the top universities in Tajikistan), created the first national ML program;

Leads credit scoring for global banks in Central Asia, Middle East, Caucasus.

Firuzjon Sodiqov

AI Council Secretary

Shawnee State University (BA'15);

6 years experience of project management;

Team Lead and Chief of Staff at non-profit organization TajRupt.

Loiq Mirov

Consultant of AI Council, AI Academy instructor

AI researcher with an economics background;

Dedicated to responsible and ethical AI;

Specialized in AI governance and policy;

Instructs, manages projects on AI;

Ensuring AI benefits society while respecting values.

Key Milestone

President Rahmon signed National AI Strategy – first in Central Asia – in September 2022
ANAIS aspiration: 5% of GDP to be derived from AI- related economic activities by 2040
NAIS Pillars: talent development, data enhancement, model deployment, ethical AI
Area AI as a global hub for specialized AI labs

Success stories

Dr. Akhlitdin Nizamitdinov: Senior ML Engineer

Dr. Akhlitdin holds a PhD in Statistics from Anadolu University. He has been in academia for 15 years at Polytechnic Institute of Tajik Technical University (PITTU). At PITTU, he created the first national program in machine learning education (bachelor's & master's levels) and headed the AI department. He is currently a senior ML engineer at zypl.ai where he leads credit scoring projects for global banks across Central Asia, Middle East and Caucasus.

Suhrob Saidov: Junior ML Engineer

Suhrob is a recent graduate of Tajik National University where he completed undergraduate studies in international relations. A non-technical student, he enrolled at zypl's AI Academy and completed it as a top graduate. He was then placed in an ML internship at Humo, one of Tajikistan's largest financial institutions. Currently, Suhrob is a junior ML Engineer at zypl.ai where he leads teams of ML apprentices on credit scoring deployment across Central Asia.

Deployment Case

Fintech

$50 million in microloans underwritten by AI across Tajikistan at <1% PAR30+

8 banks have deployed AI SaaS solution in both offline and digital lending

AI SaaS is now exported to 8 markets - pioneering software export industry

Education

AI for career counseling of high school students in partnership with UNICEF

ML model matching students to career choices and extracurriculars built on 5k sample

Integration underway as part of the National Test from summer 2024, reaching 70k students

E-Gov

Launched by two 17 year old AI Academy alumni, verido.ai applies proprietary OCR to extract text

Deployment in fintech sector for remote identification of clients

Scaled to 5 enterprises as early clients

AI Talent Targets (2025)