On 3 February 2026, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed announced that Ethiopia’s first dedicated Artificial Intelligence University will become operational in the next Ethiopian fiscal year (beginning July 2026). Construction is reportedly underway on a large-scale campus described as the second dedicated AI university in the world, following only the Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence in the UAE. The university aims to graduate up to 1,000 highly skilled professionals annually and will reserve 100 scholarships for students from other African countries (two per country), with Ethiopian admissions conducted on a strictly merit-based competitive basis.
The curriculum will cover machine learning, robotics, data science, and related fields, with an emphasis on applied knowledge and local problem-solving in agriculture, healthcare, and education. PM Abiy also referenced the broader 5 Million Coders Initiative as a parallel national workforce development pipeline feeding into this higher education tier.
The announcement elevates Ethiopia’s commitment to AI education well beyond voluntary curricula additions in secondary school, pointing toward a dedicated institutional infrastructure for AI higher education. This strengthens dimension 1 and, with associated government funding implied, begins to support dimension 5. However, since the university has not yet opened and no binding law mandates the curriculum, scores remain conservative at the partial level.