Cape Town — The Digital Cooperation Organisation (DCO) has unveiled the AI-REAL Toolkit at the G20 Digital Economy and Artificial Intelligence Ministers’ Meeting, marking a milestone in advancing responsible, inclusive, and sustainable artificial intelligence adoption across its member states and beyond.
The toolkit, which stands for AI Readiness to Empowerment, Adoption, and Leadership, equips governments with a diagnostic framework covering five strategic pillars, 17 dimensions, and 39 key performance indicators. It is designed to help policymakers and regulators assess readiness, identify gaps, and shape strategies to move from ambition to execution.
Unlike existing global AI indexes that only rank readiness, the AI-REAL Toolkit provides governments with a roadmap to adoption, ensuring fair, ethical, and sustainable deployment of AI across sectors.
DCO Secretary-General Deemah AlYahya emphasized that digital infrastructure and AI must be treated as global public goods, adding: “The digital and AI divides are not just numbers and statistics; they represent lost opportunities for millions of people. We must move from ambition to execution and from promises to practical solutions.”
The toolkit has already been piloted in member states, including Cyprus, to validate its applicability and refine its frameworks. It was also showcased at the Pak–Kuwait Tech Conference 2025, further highlighting its role in enabling responsible AI adoption across the DCO’s 16 member states, representing over 800 million people and nearly US$3.5 trillion in GDP.
The launch builds on the DCO’s AI Ethics Evaluator, introduced at the AI for Good Summit in Geneva earlier this year, expanding from ethical governance into a comprehensive readiness and adoption framework.
With AI projected to add 7% to global GDP over the next decade (Goldman Sachs) and the market expected to grow from US$244 billion in 2025 to over US$1 trillion by 2031 (Statista), the AI-REAL Toolkit is positioned as a key enabler of economic growth and digital inclusion.
