Pakistan says its Digital and AI Compact with the World Bank is in its final stages
Speaking at the Global AI and Digital Summit in Seoul, IT minister Shaza Fatima Khawaja set out proposed rules on AI generated content and the state's own use of AI.
Pakistan's IT minister told the Global AI and Digital Summit in Seoul on 19 October that the country and the World Bank are in the final stages of a Digital and AI Compact covering 2026 to 2030. Government announcements before her trip had said Pakistan was set to become the first country to sign such a compact. The summit, hosted by the World Bank Group with South Korea's science and finance ministries, runs from 19 to 22 October.
In a keynote titled "Digital and AI Compacts: From Ambition to Action", Shaza Fatima Khawaja described four lessons from Pakistan's experience, as the ministry reported it. The first is a single owner. More than 100 government entities used to work in silos, she said, until Parliament passed the Digital Nation Pakistan Act 2025, which created a National Digital Commission chaired by the prime minister. The prime minister has approved a National Digital Master Plan to digitise 12 priority sectors through 2035.
Rules for AI the state uses
The most concrete part of the speech was about regulation. Pakistan has no AI specific regulatory structure today. The minister said proposed legislation would require labels on synthetic or AI generated content, give citizens a right to human review of decisions influenced by AI, and require government bodies to register their AI systems and assess their impact before deployment. Her argument was that the state should govern its own use of AI first.
On inclusion, she said Pakistan is building a data exchange layer, a digital identity and a unified payment interface as one connected system, where data is shared but not copied or stored and needs the citizen's consent. She said more than 1 million women led farms have been registered and that 57 national standards have been set for the private sector.
Targets and measurement
The minister said Pakistan rose 14 places in the UN E Government Index 2024, from 150th to 136th, and that each federal secretary will report annually to the commission on a digital scorecard for their ministry. She repeated earlier commitments: $1 billion for AI through 2030, AI and digital training for 1 million professionals outside the IT sector, and 1,000 fully funded AI PhD scholarships. The Islamabad AI Declaration, she said, sets nine principles for sovereign and responsible AI.
On the sidelines she met Google vice president Wilson L. White to discuss educational and technical cooperation, progress on recent agreements and Google's presence in Pakistan. A meeting with a World Bank vice president was also on her schedule.
