The Complete Guide to Using AI in the Government Industry in Lebanon in 2025

Lebanon's government sees AI as a practical lever to rebuild public services and revive the economy in 2025: a planned $30–$50 million investment over two years will fund generative AI and digital public infrastructure - national digital ID, digital payments, data exchange and a Super App to federate services - backed by the World Bank and laid out in reporting on BiometricUpdate report on Lebanon's $30–$50M AI and DPI plan.

That ambition matters because AI can cut manual bottlenecks and unlock access at scale, but success requires governance and a workforce shift: the UN ESCWA urges urgent upskilling and a regional governance framework to manage bias, privacy and jobs in its analysis on AI's impact on jobs in the Arab region.

For agencies ready to start, practical training - like the AI Essentials for Work bootcamp - can build prompt-and-tool fluency for frontline staff to use AI safely and effectively; see the AI Essentials for Work bootcamp syllabus.

“Our collaboration with Roland Berger, leveraging its extensive international expertise, will accelerate the adoption of artificial intelligence across vital sectors and support our plans to build a sustainable knowledge economy that strengthens Lebanon's position in this critical field.”

Lebanon's fragile economy and the drive for sweeping reforms make 2025 a tipping point for government AI adoption: statistical analysis even “revealed clear patterns in AI adoption and financial behaviors during Lebanon's crisis (2019–2025)” (see the study on AI in Lebanon's financial crisis), and political leaders have framed digital transformation as a national survival strategy - President Joseph Aoun called it the country's “best hope” to tackle corruption and reconnect with the diaspora in efforts to modernize public services and build a national digital ID. That urgency has translated into momentum on the ground (a five‑city national AI conference and even a nationwide AI Bus Tour showcased ideas and startups), while regional bodies warn that policy and skills must keep pace: ESCWA highlights massive labour shifts and the need for rapid upskilling.

Practically, this means government agencies should prioritise low‑risk, high‑impact pilots - fraud detection, emergency response optimisation and digitised payments - to stabilise public finances and restore citizen trust while channeling diaspora expertise and private partnerships into scalable digital infrastructure.

“The pace of AI advancement leaves no room for delay,” said ESCWA Executive Secretary Rola Dashti.

Lebanon's AI landscape in 2025 is at a pragmatic, early-adoption phase: the newly formed Office of the Ministry of State for Technology and Artificial Intelligence (OMSITAI) is driving a national agenda - partnering with Roland Berger to design national digital ID, digitised payments, AI infrastructure and governance frameworks while also seeding innovation for SMEs and key sectors - and the engagement will be led from Roland Berger's Beirut office with experts mobilised from the region and Europe, signalling serious capacity-building on the ground; meanwhile pilot deployments are already appearing in public services, with a state‑approved AI Pilot Program running January–June 2025 to introduce AI instruction in participating districts.

For government teams weighing projects now, low-risk practical uses such as emergency response optimisation (asset tracking and incident analytics) and fraud detection and compliance automation offer clear wins that reduce response times and plug revenue leakages - resources and prompts for these use cases are explored in Nucamp's AI Essentials for Work syllabus - emergency response optimisation guide and in Nucamp's Cybersecurity Fundamentals syllabus - fraud detection in government guide.

“Our collaboration with Roland Berger, leveraging its extensive international expertise, will accelerate the adoption of artificial intelligence across vital sectors and support our plans to build a sustainable knowledge economy that strengthens Lebanon's position in this critical field.”

Building trustworthy AI in Lebanon starts with clear, enforceable rules - practical measures already on display in comparative examples that can be adapted at national scale.

Municipal policies like the City of Lebanon (ADM‑143) set useful precedents: mandatory transparency and auditing, explicit definitions of algorithmic discrimination, human‑override requirements and a small Technology Review Committee (Cyber Services Director, Chief Innovation Officer, Asset Manager) to review deployments - concrete building blocks that Lebanese agencies can mirror; see the full City of Lebanon ADM‑143 AI Policy.

At the national level, OMSITAI's strategic pact with Roland Berger commits to designing governance frameworks, technical standards and ethical safeguards alongside infrastructure goals (national ID, digitised payments), signalling a coordinated public‑private route to regulation and capacity building - read the Lebanon–Roland Berger AI partnership summary.

Complementing institutional design, AUB researchers urge a data governance framework with clear data‑sharing agreements, a Data Science Hub for public policy, and targeted data literacy programs so open data and analytics can improve services without compromising privacy - see the AUB policy brief on data science for Lebanon's public sector.

Together these measures - transparency, audits, human alternatives, legal clarity and shared infrastructure - form a pragmatic governance toolkit Lebanon can adopt to make AI reliable, auditable and useful for citizens.

“Our collaboration with Roland Berger, leveraging its extensive international expertise, will accelerate the adoption of artificial intelligence across vital sectors and support our plans to build a sustainable knowledge economy that strengthens Lebanon's position in this critical field.”

Practical AI use cases for Lebanon's government span education, health, agriculture, tourism and manufacturing - and each offers measurable wins if tied to the country's $30–$50M transformation plan: in education, scaling AI curricula at universities and teaching AI from schools to universities can build the talent pipeline the minister calls for and power personalised learning and teacher support; in health, AI can make social assistance delivery and patient triage far more efficient while supporting geospatial imaging to map war damage and estimate reconstruction costs; agriculture and tourism can benefit from predictive analytics and recommendation engines that boost yields and tailor visitor experiences to revive local businesses; and manufacturing and trade can adopt image recognition for inspections alongside fraud‑detection routines that close revenue leakages.

These sectoral paths are already part of OMSITAI's mission via the Roland Berger partnership to harness AI for key industries, and operational pilots - like emergency response optimisation with asset tracking and incident analytics - offer low‑risk, high‑impact starting points for agencies.

Learn more about the government–consultancy pact at the Roland Berger government AI partnership page, the sectoral priorities and education push in The National's coverage of Lebanon's AI strategy, and practical emergency‑response guides in the Nucamp AI Essentials for Work syllabus and use‑case resources (Nucamp AI Essentials for Work syllabus).

“Our collaboration with Roland Berger, leveraging its extensive international expertise, will accelerate the adoption of artificial intelligence across vital sectors and support our plans to build a sustainable knowledge economy that strengthens Lebanon's position in this critical field.”

Lebanon's AI scene in 2025 is compact but energetic, with Beirut firmly established as the innovation hub where fintech, healthcare and media startups are building practical tools for public and private sectors; local names to watch include Neotic and Bluering, while the American University of Beirut fuels research and talent pipelines, and international collaboration is ramping up via government partnerships.

Growth is ambitious - the national LEAP initiative aims to attract $1 billion in foreign investment and create 10,000 tech jobs - yet current indicators show a small ecosystem (1 AI patent in 2024, roughly $300k in recorded AI investment in 2022 and 58 AI publications in 2025), which underscores both promise and the need for scale.

For agencies seeking partners, these startups offer focused domain expertise (fintech fraud detection, clinical analytics, media personalization) and benefit from broader strategic support like the government's consultancy pact with Roland Berger; read the compact country overview on AI World Lebanon country overview, the LEAP initiative summary at LEAP initiative summary: Lebanon aims to become a regional tech hub, and the government–Roland Berger collaboration via Lebanon government and Roland Berger AI collaboration details to identify credible partners for pilots and capacity building.

“Our collaboration with Roland Berger, leveraging its extensive international expertise, will accelerate the adoption of artificial intelligence across vital sectors and support our plans to build a sustainable knowledge economy that strengthens Lebanon's position in this critical field.”

Lebanon's place in the global AI race is a clear signal: the country ranked 105th worldwide (11th in the region) with a 0.42 score on the IMF's 2023 AI Preparedness Index, showing there's room to catch up rather than reinvent the wheel - see the IMF 2023 AI Preparedness Index - Credit Libanais summary IMF 2023 AI Preparedness Index - Credit Libanais summary.

Rather than chasing headline tech, the practical lesson for Lebanon is to replicate what works elsewhere by focusing on governance, talent and home‑grown capability: President Joseph Aoun's push to treat digital transformation as a national project and to tap the diaspora for skills and investment offers a playbook for coordinated reform and international partnership (Arab News report on President Joseph Aoun's digital transformation initiative).

Equally important is avoiding an overreliance on resold foreign solutions - critiques of the local market warn that a reseller‑heavy ecosystem, weak R&D and an expertise gap leave projects fragile, not bespoke for Lebanon's needs, so targeted investment in research, incubators and retraining will pay dividends (analysis of Lebanon's AI companies and market structure (Soufan Medium)).

In practice that means pairing the $30–$50M DPI/AI program with clear standards, data governance, and funding for local R&D and university–industry partnerships so the country doesn't just adopt tools but learns to build and audit them; imagine equipping a small army of public‑sector “mechanics” who can tune algorithms locally rather than importing black‑box fixes.

A focused, phased approach - pilot, audit, scale - lets Lebanon turn its political will and diaspora know‑how into measurable AI readiness instead of leaving the country on the sidelines of a technology race already underway.

“Digital transformation is not a technical choice. Digitalization is not just a government project; it is a national project.”

Fixing Lebanon's AI bottlenecks means tackling three interlinked gaps at once: patchy infrastructure, scarce financing and a talent flight that leaves ministries understaffed and data fragmented - challenges repeatedly flagged at the national AI conference and the five‑city AI Bus Tour that has been galvanising diaspora and local stakeholders (see the DxTalks coverage of the AI in Lebanon Conference 2025).

Practical responses are already on the table: the LEAP roadmap and ministerial plans prioritise a compact digital backbone - national digital ID, labelled data pools and interoperable exchanges - so ministries can stop rebuilding the same siloed systems; meanwhile the new ICT Knowledge & Innovation Community (ICT KIC) is explicitly designed to mobilise funding, boost R&D and run tailored training to keep graduates local and reskill public servants (Berytech: ICT KIC launch and roadmap).

Energy limits and “data desert” realities mean Lebanon should favour low‑energy, small‑data AI (micro‑models) and phased pilots that prove value quickly, attract co‑funding and give the diaspora clear channels to invest and mentor - a pragmatic sequencing of infrastructure, investment and talent that turns political will into measurable capacity rather than a string of isolated pilots (The National: coverage of the minister's $30–$50M AI plan).

“With a budget of $30 to $50 million over the next two years, I can transform the way the government does business and deals with its citizens … in a way that is more accountable, more transparent, seamless.”

Start small, start local, and plan to evolve: a practical roadmap for Lebanese government agencies begins with the legal and institutional groundwork already set out in LEAP's first phase, then sequences lightweight, high‑value pilots - think emergency response optimisation and fraud detection - before scaling to national systems like a digital ID or payments platform; the government–Roland Berger pact provides a governance and advisory channel to design those standards and infrastructure, while community co‑creation and data democratization guard against “imported” black boxes.

Prioritise micro‑models and small‑data approaches that run on low‑power devices so pilots prove value without huge energy or hosting costs, pair each pilot with clear audit and human‑override rules, and invest equally in training to stop talent flight and build a corps of public‑sector “mechanics” who can tune algorithms locally.

Practical resources exist to guide early projects (see an emergency‑response optimisation guide and use‑case notes in Nucamp's resources) and the national strategy's socio‑technical framing reminds agencies to design AI around Lebanon's realities - not as a magic wand but as a tool co‑developed with communities and universities to deliver measurable wins quickly.

“For LEAP to move beyond lofty aspirations, it must confront Lebanon's reality as a ‘data desert' facing a ‘talent exodus,' and embrace an AI approach co-created with the broader public.”

To move from ambition to delivery, Lebanon's next steps should be practical, phased and people‑centred: adopt clear municipal‑style rules (for example the City of Lebanon's ADM‑143 AI policy provides a ready template for transparency, audits, human override and a Technology Review Committee), pair that rulebook with an implementation pact like the OMSITAI–Roland Berger collaboration to design standards and a national digital backbone, and focus first on low‑risk, high‑value pilots (emergency‑response optimisation, fraud detection and digitised payments) that prove impact quickly and attract co‑funding; see the City policy for concrete governance language and the Roland Berger summary for the government partnership.

Equally important is skilling the workforce now - practical courses such as Nucamp's AI Essentials for Work bootcamp teach promptcraft, tool fluency and use‑case playbooks for frontline staff so agencies can run pilots safely and iterate to scale.

Pair small, low‑energy “micro‑models” with a lean audit regime, invite diaspora expertise into pilot teams, and sequence projects so each success funds the next phase of LEAP - turning $30–$50M of political will into visible service improvements rather than isolated experiments.

“With a budget of $30 to $50 million over the next two years, I can transform the way the government does business and deals with its citizens … in a way that is more accountable, more transparent, seamless.”