News Body
2026, enabling Egyptian innovators, startups, and professionals to access global opportunities in the field of AI.
This initiative reflects EiTESAL’s commitment to empowering local talent, guiding applicants through the official nomination process, ensuring compliance with WITSA requirements, and enhancing the international visibility of Egyptian AI-driven solutions.
Application Guidelines:
- Applicants must complete and send the WITSA_2026_Global_AI_Awards_Nomination_Form.pdf
- Applicants should leave all fields related to payment empty.
- In the field asking about "Nominating WITSA Member Association / Country/Economy", applicants must write: "EiTESAL Association for Information & Communication Technology".
- Applicants should use the naming convention as stated by WITSA as follow: [Country/Economy][Category][Applicant]_NominationForm.pdf
- Submission email subject should be: WITSA AI Awards 2026 Submission - [Applicant] - [Category Name]
Financial Support:
- The $100 USD application fee will be fully covered for all eligible local nominees.
- Applicants are required to skip any payment sections in the form.
Judging Criteria (To include in calls for applicants)
Submissions will be evaluated on these strict, weighted criteria:
- Global Impact / Potential: 30%
- Scalability: 30%
- Innovative Features & Functionalities: 20%
- Proven Solution (Quantified Evidence): 20%
Award Categories (Official Details)
1- The WITSA Global AI Award for Infrastructure
This award recognizes the pioneers who have built the foundational infrastructure that makes scalable, responsible AI development possible.
WHO IS ELIGIBLE: Organizations, technology providers, corporations (including SMEs and startups), research and technology organizations, academia, collaborative consortia, non-profits, and government bodies.
WHAT IT RECOGNIZES: AI infrastructure provides the foundation for development and deployment — the AI Factories of the future. This award honors those who have developed and deployed cutting-edge infrastructure solutions that accelerate AI development, maximize operational efficiency, ensure responsible governance, and drive scalable global impact. Eligible solutions must be scalable, demonstrate quantified real-world impact, and reflect innovation across hardware, software, and operational paradigms.
NOMINATION REQUIREMENTS:
- Submit rigorous, quantified evidence of real-world deployment benefits and safety across Actionable Autonomy, Safety and Resilience, Efficiency and Sustainability, and Economic and Accessibility Impact.
- Demonstrate scalability: the core value of the winning use case must be its proven ability to scale across large, complex operations.
- Showcase innovative features across hardware, software, or operational paradigms that represent a meaningful advance over existing approaches.
- Include a mandatory Summary and Impact Statement justifying the nomination with emphasis on scale and impact. Submissions without this statement will not be considered.
- Open to nominations addressing AI infrastructure initiatives like AI Data Centers, semiconductors, Physical AI and Autonomous Action, AI Efficiency and Sustainability, MLOps and Model Governance, Distributed and Edge AI Infrastructure, and Low-Resource Infrastructure for Digital Inclusion.
2- The WITSA Global AI Award for Talent
This award recognizes organizations that are closing the global AI skills gap by building the ethical, high-skilled workforce the AI era demands.
WHO IS ELIGIBLE: Organizations, governments, NGOs, and academia.
WHAT IT RECOGNIZES: Recognizes outstanding achievements by government bodies, educational institutions, corporations, and non-profits that are cultivating, upskilling, and deploying an AI-ready professional workforce. The winning nominee will demonstrate a deep, strategic commitment to building a sustainable human talent pipeline that ensures future economic prosperity and social inclusion. Nominated initiatives must be scalable, globally impactful, and incorporate innovative approaches that surpass conventional training or policy methods.
NOMINATION REQUIREMENTS:
- Provide quantified evidence of talent development outcomes — workforce numbers trained, employment outcomes, or measurable efficiency gains from human-AI collaboration.
- Demonstrate scalability and global impact potential, with innovative approaches that go beyond standard training programs.
- Include a mandatory Summary and Impact Statement with critical emphasis on scale and impact. Submissions without this statement will not be considered.
- Acceptable nomination types include: National AI Talent Policy Transformation; Interdisciplinary Education and Curriculum Innovation; Corporate Workforce Reskilling; and Agentic AI Deployment for Human Augmentation.
3. The WITSA Global AI Award for Entrepreneurship
This award celebrates the founders and teams who are translating cutting-edge AI research into commercially viable, safe, and globally scalable solutions.
WHO IS ELIGIBLE: Organizations, startups, teams, and individuals.
WHAT IT RECOGNIZES: Recognizes visionary founders, executive teams, and mission-driven organizations embodying innovation and entrepreneurship in AI. Recipients are distinguished by their exceptional ability to drive economic growth, create new markets, and advance a culture of scalable, ethical, and impactful technological progress. Evidence must be quantifiable, proving the technology's effectiveness, market traction, safety measures, and international scaling potential.
NOMINATION REQUIREMENTS:
- Provide rigorous, quantified evidence demonstrating real-world benefits, safety, scalability, and global impact potential of the AI deployment.
- Include a comprehensive Summary and Impact Statement — a mandatory component. Submissions without detailed justification will not be considered.
- Representative nomination examples: a high-growth AI startup with proven market traction and a clear global scaling strategy; an accelerator or research institute fostering ethical AI growth in underserved regions; an established enterprise with a high-impact internal AI innovation generating quantifiable efficiency gains and new commercial offerings.
4. The WITSA Global AI Award for Use Cases
This award celebrates deployed AI applications that deliver quantifiable, real-world impact — proving AI as a vital engine of progress and sustainable transformation.
WHO IS ELIGIBLE: Corporations, organizations, institutions, startups, governments, and research teams.
WHAT IT RECOGNIZES: Recognizes the most impactful and innovative Digital and Physical AI applications deployed across targeted sectors globally. The nominated use case must demonstrate its capacity for high-impact change, technical innovation, and scalability — moving beyond demonstration to proven, operational results. Eligible sectors include Healthcare, Smart Cities, Financial Inclusion, Climate Action, Agentic AI for Human Augmentation, Cyber Resilience, Precision Agriculture, and Education Technology, among others.
NOMINATION REQUIREMENTS:
- Quantifiable Benefit: Provide verified numeric data — measured reductions in energy use or fraud losses, proven increases in diagnostic speed or production efficiency, or clear expansion in financially included citizens.
- Scalability and Global Potential: Articulate the solution's inherent capacity for widespread adoption across geographies or industries, demonstrated at scale.
- Innovation and Safety: Highlight advances over existing methods and demonstrate strict adherence to ethical guidelines, data privacy, and bias mitigation.
- Include a mandatory Summary and Impact Statement clearly articulating the problem addressed, the AI solution deployed, and quantified benefits achieved. Submissions without this statement will not be considered.
5. The WITSA Global AI Award for Data
This award honors the organizations and individuals who treat data as the strategic asset it is — proving that data integrity is the true determinant of scalable, safe AI.
• WHO IS ELIGIBLE: Organizations, teams, and individuals.
• WHAT IT RECOGNIZES: Recognizes excellence in AI Data by honoring those who have unlocked and governed the value in data assets to achieve real-world breakthroughs in reliability, security, access, and impactful deployment. This award is reserved for pioneers who demonstrate that robust, AI-powered data strategies are the foundation of scalable and sustainable AI success. Eligible nominations span autonomous systems with novel data pipelines, AI- driven environmental optimization, industrial transformation through ML pattern recognition, enterprise data integrity tools, knowledge democratization initiatives, and digital inclusion through edge AI.
• NOMINATION REQUIREMENTS:
- Submit quantified evidence of real-world deployment benefits and safety, proving that the work is scalable and features innovations that differentiate it from conventional methods.
- Demonstrate innovation in data strategy — whether in pipeline reliability, governance, anomaly detection, NLP-driven access, or low-resource edge deployment.
- Include a mandatory Summary and Impact Statement with emphasis on the scale and impact of the nominated work. Submissions without this statement will not be considered.
6. The WITSA Global AI Award for Public Policy
This award recognizes policy leadership that translates ethical principles into scalable, innovation-friendly governance frameworks that build public trust in AI.
WHO IS ELIGIBLE: Organizations, institutions, and government bodies.
WHAT IT RECOGNIZES: Recognizes exceptional leadership in creating policy frameworks that translate abstract ethical principles into rigorous, real-world safeguards — while maximizing responsible AI innovation and avoiding excessive regulatory burdens. The winning policy will serve as a global benchmark for transparent, fair, and beneficial AI deployment. Submissions must demonstrate adherence to the WITSA Key AI Policy Principles (where applicable), showcasing foresight and regulatory caution: technology-neutral, performance-focused, narrowly tailored, risk-based, and designed to attract investment while protecting citizens.
NOMINATION REQUIREMENTS:
- Demonstrate that the policy is technology-neutral, narrowly tailored to specific sectors, and uses a risk-based approach calibrated to the risk profile of each AI application.
- Show that existing regulatory enforcement was prioritized before introducing new AI-specific laws, and that any intervention demonstrably justifies its costs to innovation.
- Provide evidence of stakeholder collaboration, technical expertise integration, and — where applicable — use of innovation tools such as regulatory sandboxes.
- Include a mandatory Summary and Impact Statement with emphasis on scale and impact. Submissions without this statement will not be considered.
7. The WITSA Global AI Award for Investments
This award recognizes the capital allocators and ecosystem builders whose strategic investments are accelerating responsible AI adoption and generating sustainable economic growth.
WHO IS ELIGIBLE: Organizations, firms, and government agencies.
WHAT IT RECOGNIZES: Recognizes exceptional foresight and execution in driving AI and ML innovation through targeted investment — spanning direct financial capitalization of groundbreaking AI ventures and the establishment of enabling AI ecosystems that nurture talent pipelines and robust infrastructure. Recipients are true catalysts, ensuring investments advance responsible, scalable AI solutions that generate significant economic growth and job creation worldwide. The scope is intentionally broad: eligible nominations include AI-focused venture capital funds, government economic development agencies, non-profits funding open-source AI infrastructure, policy bodies that attract capital through balanced AI governance, technology companies making significant data platform investments, and corporate venture arms linked to measurable job creation in underserved regions.
NOMINATION REQUIREMENTS:
- Provide quantified evidence of real-world impact: jobs created, capital mobilized, startups funded, or reductions in barriers to AI entry for developers globally.
- Demonstrate that investments advance responsible and scalable AI solutions with both financial and societal returns.
- Include a mandatory Summary and Impact Statement succinctly justifying the nomination with emphasis on scale and impact. Submissions lacking this statement will not be considered.
Registration Link
Applicant FAQ
Nominees PDF for more details
