At a partnership workshop in Helsinki on 28-29 January 2026, UNICEF, Arm, the Micro:bit Educational Foundation, and the Raspberry Pi Foundation announced the expansion of the Tinkering with Tech programme to Uzbekistan. The Raspberry Pi Foundation’s Experience AI curriculum — covering AI concepts, computational thinking, and AI bias — is being integrated into the programme for Uzbekistani educators and learners. A localization-focused implementation was reported in April 2026, with in-country teacher training using locally-relevant examples, including exercises that expose AI image-generation bias in Uzbek cultural contexts (e.g., representations of the city of Gulistan).
Experience AI’s curriculum explicitly includes an ethics and bias component, making this one of the few international AI education programmes in Central Asia to address AI ethics directly in teacher training. The Raspberry Pi Foundation emphasises localisation as essential for meaningful AI literacy education rather than superficial adoption of Western-centric AI examples.
Who it affects: Uzbekistani teachers participating in the Tinkering with Tech programme and their students, primarily at the school level. The programme reaches educators beyond the Five Million AI Leaders government initiative, expanding the pool of AI-trained teachers through an independent international partnership.
What is notably missing: The programme is internationally funded and delivered, not mandated by the Uzbek government. It operates as a complement to, not a replacement for, the state-run Five Million AI Leaders cascade training. Reach is currently limited to participating schools in the programme; nationwide scale would require integration into the government’s curriculum and teacher training machinery.