Nepal Approves National AI Policy 2082: Goals, Plans and What It Means for You

Nepal now has a national plan for artificial intelligence. The Cabinet has approved the National Artificial Intelligence (AI) Policy, 2082, setting out how the government wants to use AI, regulate it and build the skills to work with it. Here is what it says, and what it means if you are a student or developer in Nepal.

At a glance

• Approved: by Nepal's Cabinet on 11 August 2025.
• Goal: a place in the top 50 of the global AI Readiness Index within five years.
• New bodies: a National AI Center and AI Centers of Excellence in every province.
• Focus sectors: education, agriculture, health, energy and transport.

#The basics

• Approved: by the Council of Ministers at its meeting on 11 August 2025. The decision was announced by the Minister for Communications and Information Technology and government spokesperson, Prithvi Subba Gurung (The Himalayan Times / RSS).
• Prepared by: the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology. A draft was published for comment in February 2025 (New Business Age).
• Time frame: five years.

#The headline targets

According to reporting on the approved policy by The Annapurna Express, the policy aims to:

• put Nepal among the top 50 countries in the global AI Readiness Index;
• add 1% to GDP from the ICT sector;
• develop skilled people and AI-driven innovation across key sectors within five years.

#New institutions

• a National AI Center to oversee implementation;
• AI Centers of Excellence in every province;
• a National AI Index to track progress;
• AI incubation hubs for start-ups;
• a "brain gain" programme to attract Nepali AI professionals working abroad.

#Where AI is meant to be used

#Rules, data and safety

The policy promises new data protection laws and updates to existing ones, regulatory sandboxes for testing AI systems safely, standards and certification for AI applications, and guidelines against misuse such as misinformation and intellectual property violations (The Annapurna Express).

On infrastructure, it mentions data centres, cloud and high-performance computing, reliable electricity, green data centres in mountain regions, and a feasibility study on producing AI-related hardware locally.

#The big question: implementation

Writing a policy is the easy part. Whether the AI Center and the provincial centres are actually set up and funded is the thing to watch.

Update (1 November 2026): Commentators have since asked whether the policy will be backed by enough money, strong institutions and real accountability (The Himalayan Times, opinion). Nepal has also changed government twice since this policy was approved: the interim government formed after the September 2025 protests, and the RSP government of Prime Minister Balen Shah elected in March 2026. AI training is also spreading, from the "AI for Nepal 2026" school campaign launched in Dhangadhi (ICT Frame) to free online courses from the National Vocational Training Establishment (Nepal News).

#What it means for you

If you are a student or a developer in Nepal, the direction is clear: the government expects demand for people who can build, evaluate and apply AI, in agriculture, health and energy as much as in software companies. You don't need to wait for a national centre to start:

• Learn the foundations for free with the Hamropedia AI & ML roadmap: 8 phases, from Python and maths to LLMs and AI engineering.
• Read how to learn AI and machine learning for free for a realistic plan.
• Build something local: a Nepali text classifier, a crop-disease image model, a Devanagari handwriting recogniser. Projects with Nepali data stand out.

---

Sources: The Himalayan Times (RSS), 14 Aug 2025 · New Business Age · The Annapurna Express, 22 Aug 2025 · The Himalayan Times, opinion · Ekantipur