A regional initiative by UNDP and Women in AI honouring 100 women building, deploying, and governing artificial intelligence across the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Egypt, and Morocco. Backed by structured mentorship and the Arab States' first regional evidence base on women in AI.
Women shaping AI across the four Arab States, profiled and showcased.
Six-month structured matches across nine specialism areas.
In-depth qualitative profiles informing the regional evidence base.
UAE, Jordan, Egypt, Morocco. Anchored in UNDP RBAS Outcome 4.
Researchers, founders, engineers, policymakers. The full cohort is published progressively across the cohort year, each one a portrait of a woman shaping AI in the region.
Browse the cohort by country and theme. Profiles are published progressively each profile curated for relevance to the regional report and policy brief.
Six months of structured mentorship across the cohort, anchored in nine specialism areas. Mentors are drawn from the cohort itself, the Women in AI global network, and the regional AI ecosystem.
From application to first session in under four weeks. Match decisions are made by the WAI coordination team in consultation with the UNDP gender focal point.
Cohort members complete a short profile covering specialism, career stage, and what they hope to gain from the engagement.
The platform proposes three potential mentors based on specialism overlap, career stage, and stated goals.
The WAI coordination team confirms the match within five working days and connects mentor and mentee.
Monthly structured check-ins guided by published mentorship guidelines. Optional graduation event at the close of the cohort year.
Mentor and mentee profiles are tagged across nine areas. Multi-tagging is supported, so mentees with cross-cutting interests are matched with mentors who span those domains.
Bias auditing, regulatory frameworks, responsible deployment, and AI policy advocacy.
Clinical ML, medical imaging, regulatory clearance, and the operationalisation of AI in health systems.
AI for climate intelligence, agricultural ML, water management, and natural resource monitoring.
Arabic NLP research, dialect handling, low-resource language modelling, and culturally aware systems.
Building AI ventures, fundraising, technical due diligence, team scaling, and product strategy.
Foundation models, fine-tuning, prompt engineering, evaluation, and applied generative systems.
PhD trajectories, publication strategy, grant applications, and lab building in academic settings.
Data engineering, model deployment, infrastructure, evaluation pipelines, and production reliability.
AI in government services, digital public infrastructure, and the practicalities of public-sector adoption.
Thirty in-depth qualitative case studies drawn from the cohort, surfacing the enabling conditions, structural challenges, and turning points behind women building AI in the Arab States. These feed directly into the regional report and policy brief.
Selected from the cohort by theme balance, country balance, and career stage diversity.
Each case study is structured around a common framework allowing cross-case comparison.
Cases are clustered into six thematic anchors that align with the regional report structure.
Six excerpts from the case study series. Full case studies are published alongside the regional report at the close of the cohort year.
Eligibility is regional and inclusive. Arab women working on or in AI in any capacity (research, engineering, founding, policy, communications, education) residing or working in the UAE, Jordan, Egypt, or Morocco are eligible.
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Three regional networking events, a flagship award ceremony in the UAE, and a closing regional policy dialogue. All events are hybrid and accessible across the four countries.
Welcome session for the full cohort. Programme orientation, mentorship kick-off, and regional working-group introductions.
Deep-dive on the technical and ethical challenges of Arabic NLP. Hosted in partnership with regional academic institutions.
Two-day summit hosted in partnership with national digital strategy partners. Sessions on agriculture AI, AI for public services, and government adoption.
The flagship event. All 100 women honoured. Keynotes, profile screenings, and the launch of the regional report on women in AI in the Arab States.
Closed-door dialogue convening policymakers, industry leaders, and academia around the recommendations of the regional report and policy brief.