The UAE and Lebanon are taking AI skills training to an unusually large scale. The ambitious One Million Lebanese AI Experts initiative highlights just how committed the region is to shaping the future of technology through education.
The two countries have launched the One Million Lebanese AI Experts initiative, a programme designed to give one million people in Lebanon practical experience with generative artificial intelligence and prompt engineering.
The initiative was announced during a meeting between UAE Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan and Lebanese Prime Minister Dr. Nawaf Salam in New York, on the sidelines of the 81st session of the United Nations General Assembly.
Rather than limiting the programme to developers or technology professionals, the initiative aims to reach people across different ages, backgrounds and occupations. The focus is practical: learning how to communicate with generative AI systems and use them more effectively in everyday situations.
One Million Lebanese AI Experts puts practical skills first
The programme will operate through the UAE’s Government Experience Exchange Programme (GEEP) in cooperation with the Lebanese government. Its training will focus on practical generative AI skills, particularly prompt engineering and the ability to formulate instructions that help AI systems produce more useful and accurate responses.
The approach is broader than conventional technical AI education. Participants are not necessarily being trained to develop machine-learning models or become AI engineers. Instead, the programme focuses on AI literacy and the skills people need to work with tools that are already entering offices, classrooms, government services and businesses.
That distinction matters. As generative AI becomes easier to access, the challenge is increasingly about knowing how to use it effectively rather than simply having access to the technology.
Prompt engineering sits at the centre of the programme
Prompt engineering will form an important part of the training. Participants will learn how to structure instructions, provide useful context and communicate more clearly with generative AI systems. These skills can influence the relevance and accuracy of the responses an AI model produces.
The UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the initiative aims to help participants use AI tools to accomplish tasks, improve productivity and develop new approaches to solving problems. The training therefore appears geared toward practical use rather than deep technical instruction.
Someone does not need to understand every layer of a large language model to benefit from generative AI. Knowing what to ask, how to refine an instruction and when to question an AI-generated response can already make the technology considerably more useful.
AI training aims to reach different parts of Lebanese society
The initiative is intended to reach people across different ages, professional roles and backgrounds. That gives the programme a wider scope than an AI course designed specifically for government employees, university students or technology workers.
The potential applications are equally broad. Employees could use generative AI to help organise information or prepare documents. Entrepreneurs may use it for research, planning or administrative work. Students could explore AI-supported learning, while government employees may find applications in public services and internal workflows.
Exactly how participants use those skills will depend on their work and circumstances. The common thread is basic AI literacy: understanding how to interact with increasingly capable digital tools and use them responsibly and productively.
UAE brings its government knowledge-sharing model into AI
The initiative also expands the UAE’s use of the Government Experience Exchange Programme, which provides a framework for sharing government expertise and practices with international partners.
Through the partnership with Lebanon, that knowledge-sharing model is moving further into artificial intelligence and digital skills. The UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the programme is designed to contribute to human and institutional capability development while strengthening knowledge exchange between the two countries.
The AI initiative was announced during wider discussions between UAE and Lebanese officials covering bilateral cooperation, development and regional issues. That places the programme within a broader government-to-government relationship rather than treating it as a standalone technology project.
Training one million people creates a major implementation challenge
The scale of the programme is perhaps its most striking feature. Reaching one million participants would turn what might otherwise be a professional training initiative into a large national AI literacy programme.
Scale, however, will make implementation important. The initial announcement did not provide extensive details about how long individual courses will last, whether training will primarily take place online or in person, what certification may be offered, or how quickly the programme expects to reach its one-million-person target.
Those details will help determine what the headline number ultimately means in practice. Introducing someone to generative AI is relatively straightforward. Building skills that remain useful after training ends is considerably harder.
Even so, the initiative points toward a broader change in how governments are approaching AI education. Instead of reserving artificial intelligence training for specialists, the UAE-Lebanon programme treats basic AI capability as something that could have value across the wider workforce and society.
AI literacy is moving beyond the technology sector
Generative AI has already reduced some of the technical barriers that once separated advanced computing tools from everyday users. People can now ask an AI system to analyse information, summarise documents, generate ideas or help structure a workflow without writing software themselves.
That shift creates a different skills gap. Access to an AI model does not automatically mean someone knows how to use it well. Users still need to understand how to give clear instructions, assess outputs and recognise when a response requires verification or further refinement.
The One Million Lebanese AI Experts initiative tackles that gap from the user side. Rather than beginning with advanced AI development, the programme starts with how people interact with AI and turn those interactions into practical results.
For Lebanon, the target is ambitious: one million people with greater exposure to generative AI. For the wider region, the initiative provides another example of AI education moving from specialist technology programmes toward broader digital-skills development.
Sources
UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs:
https://www.mofa.gov.ae/en/MediaHub/News/2026/9/25/UAE-Lebanon
Middle East AI News:
https://www.middleeastainews.com/p/uae-lebanon-agree-to-train-one-million
