AI in Governance | The upcoming future of Tech

The AI Association of Nepal is what responsible AI governance looks like when you're not America, China, or the EU — and when the stakes of getting it wrong fall most heavily on the people who had the least say in the technology's creation.

By Analog Ventures Research · March 2025 · 9 min read

Every country that matters in AI policy is either a superpower or a regional hegemon. The US writes rules for its companies. The EU writes rules for its market. China writes rules for its state. What about the 160+ countries that are neither building frontier AI nor regulating trillion-dollar tech sectors — but will still be profoundly affected by AI's social and economic effects? Someone needs to build those countries' capacity to engage. The AI Association of Nepal is doing that work for one of South Asia's most vulnerable but most resilient nations.

Nepal's parliament is deliberating its National AI Policy in 2025. Bureaucrats have read UNESCO's recommendations. Ministers have attended ASEAN AI forums. But the specific questions — how does AI affect remittance flows that sustain 25% of GDP? How should AI tools be deployed in Nepali language contexts where training data is scarce? What are the risks when AI-powered hiring tools are used to screen Nepali migrant workers for Middle Eastern employment? — these questions don't get answered in Geneva. The AI Association of Nepal is the institution answering them in Kathmandu.

The AI Association of Nepal (AIAN) is a non-profit organisation focused on AI policy research, practitioner education, and governance advocacy specific to the Nepali context. Its work sits at the intersection of technical AI knowledge and public policy — translating complex AI capabilities and risks into language and frameworks that Nepali policymakers, businesses, civil society, and citizens can engage with meaningfully.

The organisation's timing is deliberate. Nepal's government is in the process of formalising its National AI Policy — a consequential document that will shape how AI is governed in Nepal for years. Without credible independent technical expertise in the country, that policy risks being drafted without adequate grounding in either AI's actual capabilities or Nepal's specific economic and social realities. AIAN's role is to provide that grounding.

Why Nepal's AI Policy Moment Matters Beyond Nepal

Nepal's population of 30 million and its relatively small economy might suggest that its AI policy decisions are locally consequential only. This misses the broader significance. Nepal is representative of a large class of developing nations navigating the AI transition: high remittance dependency, significant labour export to regions where AI automation is reshaping employment markets (Gulf construction, Middle Eastern domestic work), growing digital service sector, and language/cultural contexts that are dramatically underrepresented in global AI training data.

The policy choices Nepal makes — on AI deployment in public services, on data governance, on algorithmic accountability in high-stakes decisions like visa processing and labour matching — will be watched by similar countries in South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa. Good Nepal AI policy is a template for dozens of countries that lack the technical capacity to build this expertise from scratch.

30M Nepal Population

25% GDP from Remittances

2025 National AI Policy Year

South Asia Policy Template

The Three Functions AIAN Serves

AIAN's work operates across three distinct but connected functions. First, policy research and advocacy — producing analysis of AI's implications for Nepal's key sectors (agriculture, tourism, remittances, public administration) and contributing to national policy processes. Second, practitioner community building — connecting Nepal's AI researchers, developers, and educators to create an ecosystem that can actually implement AI responsibly. Third, public education — making AI legible to citizens, civil society, and journalists who will ultimately hold AI systems and the policies governing them accountable.

Each function reinforces the others. Research credibility gives the association influence in policy processes. Community building creates the practitioners who can implement policy recommendations. Public education builds the social literacy that makes accountability possible.

"The countries that have the least power in shaping AI's development will bear the greatest consequences from getting its governance wrong. AIAN is building the capacity to change that equation for Nepal — and setting a model for the region."

Nepal-Specific AI Challenges: What Generic Policy Gets Wrong

The AI governance challenges Nepal faces are genuinely different from those facing the EU or US. Consider remittances: over $9 billion annually flows into Nepal from migrant workers in the Gulf, Malaysia, and Japan. These workers are increasingly being screened, hired, and monitored using AI tools built by employers in high-income countries for contexts with no understanding of Nepali cultural norms, language, or legal protections. If an AI hiring system systematically discriminates against Nepali workers based on biased training data, the economic harm cascades to 25% of Nepal's GDP.

Or consider agriculture: 65% of Nepal's population is agricultural, and much of it is smallholder farming in terrain so challenging that satellite imagery and predictive models trained on flat-terrain agriculture in Kansas produce useless or harmful predictions. Building AI that actually works for Nepali farmers requires starting from the specific geography, crop systems, and market access constraints of the Himalayan context.

AIAN's value is understanding that Nepal needs policy that addresses these specifics — not just policy that pastes "responsible AI principles" onto a generic framework developed elsewhere.

Structural Challenges for AIAN

• Funding sustainability: Non-profit AI policy organisations in developing countries face chronic funding challenges. Grant cycles are short; policy influence takes years. Building stable institutional funding is a persistent constraint.

• Brain drain: Nepal's best AI talent consistently emigrates. The people most capable of doing this work are also the most likely to take better-paying opportunities elsewhere. Community retention is a fundamental challenge.

• Policy influence without political access: Technical excellence is necessary but not sufficient. Policy influence requires political relationships that take years to build and are vulnerable to government changes.

• Scope creep vs. depth: The temptation to address every AI issue in every sector can dilute impact. Focused prioritisation on Nepal's highest-stakes AI governance questions produces more influence than comprehensive coverage.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q1: What is the AI Association of Nepal?

The AI Association of Nepal (AIAN) is a non-profit organisation focused on AI policy research, practitioner community building, and governance advocacy for Nepal. It contributes to Nepal's National AI Policy process, connects the local AI practitioner community, and educates citizens and civil society about AI's implications for Nepal's economy, society, and governance.

Q2:Why does Nepal need its own AI policy?

Nepal faces AI governance challenges that are specific to its context: remittance-dependent economy vulnerable to AI-driven labour market disruption, agricultural population using systems optimised for other geographies, Nepali language severely underrepresented in AI training data, and public institutions with limited technical capacity for AI oversight. Generic AI policies from the EU or US do not address these specifics.

Q3: What is Nepal's National AI Policy 2025?

Nepal's National AI Policy 2025 is the government's framework for governing AI development and deployment in Nepal. It covers areas including public sector AI adoption, data governance, ethical AI standards, AI education and skills development, and international cooperation on AI standards. AIAN has contributed technical analysis and civil society perspectives to the policy development process.

Q4: How does AI threaten Nepal's remittance economy?

Nepal's 4+ million migrant workers send home over $9 billion annually — roughly 25% of GDP. These workers are concentrated in sectors facing AI-driven automation (construction, manufacturing, domestic services) and are screened by AI hiring systems that may have no knowledge of Nepali cultural context or may encode biases from training data that disadvantages Nepali workers. AIAN is researching how Nepal can advocate for its migrant workers in international AI governance contexts.

The Verdict

The AI Association of Nepal is doing genuinely important work — building the policy capacity and practitioner community that Nepal needs to navigate an AI transition it had no say in designing. This matters not just for Nepal but as a model for the dozens of similar countries in the developing world facing the same challenge.

The constraints are real: funding, brain drain, and the slow pace of policy influence. But the alternative — Nepal's AI governance being shaped entirely by frameworks designed for the EU and US, or by the interests of the companies and governments that build AI — is worse. Someone has to do this work. AIAN is doing it.

Watch for: Nepal's National AI Policy implementation progress, AIAN's research on AI's impact on Nepali migrant workers, and whether the organisation becomes a model for similar AI civil society institutions across South and Southeast Asia.

Sources & References

AI Association of Nepal official website · Nepal National AI Policy 2025 documentation · World Bank Nepal remittance data · UNESCO AI ethics recommendations · South Asia tech policy research · Primary research, March 2025.

This article is an independent editorial analysis. Analog Ventures Research has no commercial relationship with the AI Association of Nepal.

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