UAE Expands AI Push With New Leadership Development Program
The program aims to equip Emirati professionals with the governance and leadership skills needed to deploy agentic AI responsibly at scale.
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Image: Chetan Jha/ MIT Sloan Management Review Middle East
Having invested heavily in AI infrastructure and capital, the UAE is now turning its attention to a new challenge: building the local capabilities needed to translate ambition into execution.
A new cohort of Emirati professionals is being selected this month for the National Experts Programme – AI Track (NEP-AI), a leadership initiative designed to support the objectives of the UAE National AI Strategy 2031. The programme targets professionals across 25 priority sectors and combines technical AI education with training in governance, policy, leadership, and practical implementation.
The launch comes as the UAE seeks to strengthen its position as a global AI hub while accelerating the deployment of AI technologies across government and industry. Rather than focusing solely on technical skills, the programme is designed to cultivate leaders capable of translating AI ambitions into institutional and economic outcomes.
“The UAE has already established itself as one of the world’s leading AI ecosystems,” said Ahmed Al Shamsi, Director of the National Experts Programme. “With NEP-AI, our focus now is on moving beyond adoption to mastery, ensuring we have a specialized workforce that can shape policy and secure our competitive edge on the global stage for decades to come.”
A central element of the curriculum is agentic AI, an emerging category of systems capable of independently executing tasks and coordinating complex workflows with limited human intervention. According to Al Shamsi, the programme’s launch coincides with broader government plans to become the first country to adopt agentic AI models at scale across public-sector operations within the next two years.
The curriculum also covers AI governance, cybersecurity, data monetisation, model protection, and the broader economic and societal implications of AI deployment. Participants will receive mentorship, undertake international study visits, and complete capstone projects addressing national challenges.
Programme organisers said the initiative is structured around five strategic objectives: strengthening the UAE’s position in the global AI economy, increasing competitiveness across priority sectors, accelerating AI adoption in government services, developing Emirati talent for AI-enabled roles, and improving the translation of research, data, and infrastructure investments into real-world applications
Selection for the programme was conducted through a competitive process that included interviews with subject-matter experts, programme fellows, and alumni. According to Professor Hoda Alkhzaimi, spokesperson for NEP-AI, candidate assessments revealed a strong understanding of the UAE National AI Strategy 2031 and the importance of institutional execution.
“Equally notable was the exceptional ambition, capability, and potential demonstrated by many candidates to create meaningful local and global impact, generate real value across sectors, and strengthen national competitiveness,” Alkhzaimi said.
