Sarawak, the largest state in Malaysia, occupies a uniquely challenging position in the Southeast Asian digital landscape.
Its geographical vastness comparable in size to the entire Malaysia Peninsula, combined with a dispersed rural population scattered across remote longhouses, coastal villages, and interior settlements, has historically rendered it one of the most difficult environments in the region for equitable infrastructure development.
The state’s digital transformation journey, as articulated in its Post-COVID-19 Development Strategy 2030, is not merely an economic ambition but a fundamental necessity for social inclusion, governance efficiency, and the reduction of long-standing disparities between urban centres like Kuching, Sibu, and Miri and the rural interior.
The foundational narrative of Sarawak’s digital communities’ rests upon three pillars: the establishment of National Information Dissemination centres as community-level access points, the ambitious SMART600 telecommunications infrastructure project aimed at eradicating connectivity dead zones, and the aggressive digitalisation of government services through unified platforms like SarawakPass.
However, to fully appreciate the scale and complexity of this transition, it is essential to move beyond headline figures and critically examine these initiatives against the backdrop of evolving global best practices, persistent local challenges, and the rapidly changing technological landscape that now includes artificial intelligence and advanced semiconductor development.
The role of digital community centres in Sarawak has undergone a significant transformation since their initial conception as basic internet access points.
The network of National Information Dissemination centres, known as NADI, has now achieved complete coverage across the state, with 156 centres operational and serving communities that were previously disconnected from the digital mainstream.
Recent data from the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission reveals that nationally, NADI Smart Services recorded 1.4 million participations as of December 2025, a figure that reflects a fundamental shift in how these facilities are being utilised.
No longer are they merely places to check email or browse social media; they have evolved into active hubs for digital skills training, e-commerce enablement, and educational support.
In locations such as NADI Teku in Sibu, which serves 858 registered members, the centre has trained ten local businesses to sell their products online, demonstrating the potential for these facilities to function as catalysts for micro-entrepreneurship.
Yet a critical observation emerges from the data: approximately 60 per cent of registrants at such centres are students who rely on these public facilities for their education.
This statistic underscores a persistent and troubling reality that for many rural households, home-based internet remains either unavailable or unaffordable, making public centres an indispensable but fundamentally inadequate substitute for private household connectivity.
The reliance on NADI centres for basic educational access suggests that while the state has successfully addressed the problem of geographical access to connectivity points, it has not yet solved the deeper challenge of universal household connectivity.
The expansion of telecommunications infrastructure through the SMART600 project represents the most ambitious and consequential infrastructure initiative in Sarawak’s history.
This collaboration between the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission and the Sarawak Digital Economy Corporation embodies a sophisticated public-private partnership model designed to overcome the classic market failure that has long plagued rural telecommunications development.
Private mobile network operators have historically been reluctant to invest in remote areas due to high capital expenditure requirements and low projected returns on investment.
By having the state government cover the capital costs of tower construction while private operators manage operational expenditure, the SMART600 project has successfully de-risked rural connectivity expansion.
As of July 2025, 587 towers had been completed, with 431 activated using Multi-Operator Core Network technology, which allows multiple telecommunications providers to share a single tower infrastructure.
This approach not only reduces the environmental and economic footprint of the project but also introduces healthy competition among service providers in areas that would otherwise be monopolistic or entirely unserved.
The project is expected to benefit approximately 180,000 residents across more than 1,000 rural sites, with a particular focus on remote areas such as Belaga, Marudi, and Kapit.
However, the deployment of Multi-Operator Core Network technology, while innovative, is not a panacea.
The quality of service across these shared towers can vary significantly depending on how operators manage their bandwidth allocation, and consumers in these areas often find themselves with limited choice despite the presence of multiple theoretical providers.
Furthermore, while 4G coverage expands across the state, Sarawak remains on the periphery of the global 5G rollout, a lag that has significant implications for the state’s ability to support advanced applications in artificial intelligence, telemedicine, and the Internet of Things.
The global 5G divide is becoming an increasingly important dimension of digital inequality, and Sarawak’s current infrastructure strategy, while excellent for achieving baseline connectivity, does not yet adequately address the need for the ultra-low latency and high bandwidth that future applications will demand.
The Transformation of Digital Governance and the Emergence of Artificial Intelligence
Sarawak’s approach to digital governance has evolved rapidly from basic service digitalisation to a more sophisticated, data-driven model that increasingly incorporates artificial intelligence.
The SarawakPass unified digital identity platform represents the foundational layer of this governance transformation.
By integrating public key infrastructure security with a digital wallet functionality, SarawakPass provides citizens with secure access to a growing ecosystem of government services.
As of early 2026, more than 62 per cent of government services had been digitalised, with the state government maintaining its target of achieving full digitalisation by 2030.
The significance of SarawakPass extends far beyond convenience; it serves as the enabling infrastructure for a new paradigm of proactive governance.
The iSarawakCare platform, which operates atop this digital identity foundation, exemplifies this shift.
Designed to streamline applications for government incentives, welfare assistance, and benefits under the Ministry of Women, Early Childhood and Community Wellbeing Development, iSarawakCare has already facilitated more than 300,000 applications for the Kenyalang Gold Card initiative alone.
What makes this platform truly innovative is its data interoperability and agility.
By integrating data across different government agencies, the system allows for the proactive identification of eligible beneficiaries who might not otherwise be aware of available assistance programmes.
This represents a fundamental shift from a model where citizens must navigate complex bureaucracies to access support, to one where the government proactively reaches out to those in need.
This transition from a pull-based to a push-based service delivery model is central to the vision of a truly responsive and inclusive digital state.
Perhaps the most significant development in Sarawak’s digital landscape is the tangible progress of the Sarawak AI Centre, which has moved rapidly from policy aspiration to concrete implementation.
With an allocation of RM5 million for 2026, the centre is developing practical applications that span healthcare, environmental conservation, and advanced hardware manufacturing.
The DeepSight population health management platform consolidates health data into unified dashboards that enable real-time monitoring and resource allocation across the state’s far-flung healthcare facilities.
More ambitiously, the centre is developing artificial intelligence diagnostic tools for skin and eye diseases in partnership with the federal Ministry of Health, specifically designed for deployment in rural areas where specialist medical practitioners are scarce.
This application has the potential to directly address one of the most persistent inequalities between urban and rural Sarawak, the disparity in access to specialist healthcare.
By placing diagnostic capabilities in the hands of community health workers equipped only with smartphones, artificial intelligence can effectively extend the reach of specialist expertise far beyond the urban centres where specialists are concentrated.
In the realm of environmental conservation, the centre has developed a digital herbarium prototype that uses artificial intelligence to identify and catalogue plant species in Sarawak’s forests, supporting biodiversity research while creating a structured database of the state’s natural assets.
Perhaps most remarkably, the development of Keteq AI, described as the world’s first artificial intelligence-based power conversion device, represents a significant achievement in hardware innovation.
This gallium nitride-based semiconductor platform, developed by state-owned SMD Semiconductor, can detect and correct system disturbances in under 0.1 milliseconds, with applications ranging from smart grid management to electric vehicle charging infrastructure.
This positions Sarawak not merely as a consumer of digital technology but as a creator of deep-tech hardware with global commercial potential.
However, a critical assessment of these ambitious initiatives reveals a potential weakness that could undermine their long-term impact.
There exists a growing bifurcation in Sarawak’s digital strategy.
On one track, there is a high-tech, capital-intensive push into artificial intelligence, semiconductors, and digital banking, aimed at positioning Sarawak as a regional technology hub and achieving high-income status.
On the other track, there is a social-welfare-oriented, infrastructure-focused effort to connect rural communities and provide them with basic digital access.
While both tracks are necessary for a comprehensive digital transformation, there is a significant risk that they operate in silos, with the benefits of advanced artificial intelligence and semiconductor development accruing primarily to urban centres and a skilled elite, while rural communities remain dependent on NADI centres for basic connectivity.
The true measure of success for the Sarawak AI Centre will not be the number of patents filed or partnerships announced, but how effectively its tools particularly the healthcare diagnostic applications are deployed to benefit the most remote and underserved populations.
If artificial intelligence becomes another force that concentrates opportunity in urban areas, it will exacerbate rather than alleviate existing inequalities.
The digital transformation in Sarawak is also reshaping economic and financial practices at the grassroots level in ways that were scarcely imaginable a decade ago.
The state’s digital wallet and payment platform, S Pay Global, has experienced exponential growth that reflects both the improving connectivity landscape and a genuine shift in consumer behaviour.
As of early 2026, the platform serves 1.6 million users and 95,000 merchants, facilitating transactions worth approximately RM5.7 billion since its launch.
The state government has allocated an additional RM33 million for 2026 to further expand the platform’s capabilities, with plans to evolve it into a full-fledged digital bank.
This initiative is critical for financial inclusion, as it allows rural traders and entrepreneurs who may never have had a formal bank account to participate in the digital economy.
The shift toward cashless transactions offers significant advantages for rural communities: it reduces the risks associated with handling and storing cash, provides a transparent record of transactions that can be used to access credit, and integrates small-scale traders into a formal financial ecosystem that was previously inaccessible.
However, the success of this cashless agenda remains fundamentally dependent on the reliability of the underlying connectivity infrastructure.
A cashless transaction is only as reliable as the network it runs on, and the SMART600 project and S Pay Global are therefore intrinsically linked.
The former provides the physical layer that enables the latter to function, and any gaps or weaknesses in connectivity will directly undermine the adoption and utility of digital payments in the areas that need them most.
The digital economy’s impact on micro, small, and medium enterprises is becoming increasingly quantifiable, with initiatives such as the Sarawak Digital Mall demonstrating the potential for digital platforms to transform local economic activity.
In partnership with TikTok Shop Malaysia, the Sarawak Digital Mall initiative generated nearly RM12 million in sales from Sarawakian sellers in 2025 alone, with more than 350 local entrepreneurs trained to become active online sellers.
These figures are significant because they demonstrate that digital platforms, when coupled with targeted training and support including advertising credits of up to RM5,000 per seller which can provide a powerful mechanism for rural entrepreneurs to bypass traditional geographical constraints.
A small-scale food producer in a remote longhouse can now reach customers in Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, or beyond, transforming what was once a subsistence activity into a potentially scalable business.
Yet this transformation is not automatic; it requires not only connectivity but also digital literacy, product development skills, and an understanding of digital marketing.
The success of the Sarawak Digital Mall initiative highlights the importance of pairing infrastructure investment with human capacity development.
Persistent Challenges
Despite the impressive metrics and undeniable progress, a critical analysis reveals three persistent challenges that could undermine the long-term success of Sarawak’s digital transformation if left unaddressed.
The first and perhaps most fundamental challenge is the gap between access and meaningful use.
The state government has successfully addressed the problem of infrastructure access, getting cables, towers, and connectivity points to remote areas.
However, the problem of usage remains far more intractable.
Digital literacy is not simply the ability to operate a smartphone; it encompasses the capacity to critically evaluate online information, engage in safe digital practices, protect one’s privacy and security, and utilise digital tools for economic advancement.
The Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission’s data shows a national focus on safe internet campaigns, with 9,666 such programmes implemented in 2025.
While this focus on safety is important, it often overshadows the need for more advanced skills such as data analytics, digital marketing, content creation, and basic coding.
There is a risk that digital literacy programmes remain focused on the lowest common denominator of safety awareness while failing to equip Sarawakians with the skills needed to thrive in a digital economy.
The reliance of students on NADI centres for their education, with 60 per cent of users in some centres being students is a double-edged indicator.
It demonstrates that these centres are essential for educational equity, but it also suggests that the state has not yet succeeded in making high-quality home internet a universal utility.
As long as access is mediated through public facilities with limited operating hours, transportation requirements, and capacity constraints, it introduces barriers that students in urban areas with home connectivity do not face.
The second persistent challenge is the interrelated issues of affordability and device ownership.
Infrastructure development addresses the supply side of connectivity, but the demand side is equally important.
The cost of devices (smartphones, tablets, laptops) and the recurring cost of data plans remain significant barriers for low-income households.
While the state government has allocated RM20 million in 2026 to subsidise broadband charges for rural households under the MySRBN initiative, this remains a short-term measure that does not address the fundamental affordability challenge.
A long-term strategy must address the total cost of ownership for a rural household, which includes not only the monthly internet subscription but also the purchase and maintenance of devices, the cost of electricity to charge them, and the opportunity cost of time spent learning to use them effectively.
The digital divide is not a simple binary between connected and unconnected areas; it is a spectrum of access quality, with many Sarawakians on the lower end of that spectrum, using outdated devices with limited capabilities that constrain what they can do online.
A household with a single shared smartphone and a limited data plan faces fundamentally different digital opportunities than a household with multiple devices and unlimited high-speed broadband.
The state’s digital inclusion metrics must move beyond simple connectivity statistics to capture these qualitative differences in access.
The third challenge is the risk of creating a dual-track digital economy that exacerbates rather than reduces existing inequalities.
As noted earlier, Sarawak’s digital strategy has two parallel tracks: a high-tech, capital-intensive track focused on artificial intelligence, semiconductors, and digital banking, and a basic access and literacy track focused on connecting rural communities.
While both are necessary, there is insufficient evidence of intentional bridging between these tracks.
The artificial intelligence diagnostic tools being developed by the Sarawak AI Centre, for example, have the potential to revolutionise rural healthcare, but their deployment is not yet guaranteed.
Similarly, the semiconductor manufacturing capabilities being developed by SMD Semiconductor could create high-quality jobs, but there is no clear pathway for rural youth to acquire the skills needed to participate in this advanced manufacturing sector.
Without deliberate efforts to connect these two tracks, there is a real risk that the digital transformation will produce a small elite of highly skilled, highly paid technology workers concentrated in urban centres, while the majority of Sarawakians are left with only the most basic digital access and skills.
This outcome would represent a failure of the inclusive vision that underpins the Post-COVID-19 Development Strategy 2030.
To fully appreciate the scale, ambition, and potential weaknesses of Sarawak’s digital transformation, it is instructive to compare the state’s efforts with those of a diverse range of nations and regions across the globe.
These comparisons reveal that Sarawak is pursuing a hybrid model that combines elements of various international approaches while facing challenges that are common to developing regions with difficult geography.
Indonesia: Navigating Archipelagic Connectivity
As Sarawak’s closest neighbour and a fellow Southeast Asian nation grappling with archipelagic geography, Indonesia offers both instructive parallels and cautionary lessons.
With a population spread across more than 17,000 islands, Indonesia faces connectivity challenges that are even more daunting than Sarawak’s.
The Indonesian government has made significant strides, with internet services now covering approximately 97 per cent of populated areas.
However, as Communication and Digital Affairs Deputy Minister Nezar Patria noted in January 2026, the national average internet speed remains around 45 Mbps, below the Southeast Asian average, and 5G coverage currently extends to less than 10 per cent of the country’s territory.
The Indonesian government has set an ambitious target of increasing average speeds to 100 Mbps over the next three years, including the expansion of 5G networks.
For Sarawak, Indonesia’s experience highlights a critical insight: achieving coverage is not the same as achieving quality.
While Sarawak’s SMART600 project will bring connectivity to remote areas, the quality of that connectivity measured by speed, latency, and reliability will determine whether it can support the advanced applications that drive economic development.
Indonesia’s commitment to treating connectivity as a foundation for inclusive digital education, as articulated by Deputy Minister Nezar, mirrors Sarawak’s own emphasis on NADI centres as educational access points, but Indonesia’s recognition of the need to move beyond coverage to quality is a lesson Sarawak must heed.
Singapore: The AIoT-Powered Smart Nation
At the opposite end of the connectivity spectrum lies Singapore, a city-state that has achieved near-universal high-speed connectivity and is now focused on the next frontier: the integration of artificial intelligence with the Internet of Things to create what the Government Technology Agency terms a “digital nervous system.”
Singapore’s Open Digital Platform, developed for the Punggol Digital District, exemplifies this shift.
Rather than simply connecting infrastructure, the platform uses predictive analytics to automatically adjust cooling and lighting before crowds arrive, optimising energy usage without human intervention.
This represents a fundamental evolution from reactive to predictive infrastructure management.
For Sarawak, Singapore’s model offers a glimpse of a possible future, but it also highlights the vast gap between the state’s current focus on basic connectivity and the advanced capabilities that characterise the world’s leading digital societies.
Singapore’s Government Assisted Living Ecosystem, which connects seniors to 24-hour care through personal alert devices and a centralised case management system, demonstrates how digital infrastructure can be leveraged for social protection.
Sarawak’s iSarawakCare platform shares similar ambitions, but Singapore’s implementation is distinguished by its integration of predictive analytics, standardised frameworks, and a mature ecosystem of public-private partnerships that Sarawak is only beginning to develop.
Taiwan: Bridging the Urban-Rural Digital Divide Through AI-Enabled Education
Taiwan offers a compelling model for addressing the urban-rural educational divide through artificial intelligence.
In February 2026, Yunlin County, Taipei City, Lienchiang County, and Penghu County signed a Memorandum of Understanding to collaborate on the Cool AI Learning System, a platform that provides AI-driven real-time feedback, learning diagnostics, and instructional support.
What makes this initiative particularly relevant to Sarawak is its explicit focus on rural areas.
The Cool AI system is designed to provide students in rural counties with access to high-quality educational content that would otherwise be concentrated in urban centres.
For teachers, the system reduces administrative workload by assisting with lesson planning, test creation, and learning data analysis, allowing educators to focus more on instructional effectiveness and student care.
The platform’s curriculum-sharing mechanism enables teachers to transform their professional content into reusable course modules, creating a growing ecosystem of teaching resources.
For Sarawak, where 60 per cent of NADI centre users are students, the Cool AI model offers a potential pathway for leveraging artificial intelligence to enhance the quality of rural education.
Yunlin County’s achievement of “smart boards in every classroom” by 2025 and “one tablet per teacher and student” represents a level of hardware investment that Sarawak has not yet matched, but the Taiwanese experience demonstrates that hardware alone is insufficient; the integration of AI-powered software tools is essential for transforming that hardware into improved learning outcomes.
China: The Digital Literacy Landscape
China’s approach to digital inclusion provides a valuable perspective on the importance of moving beyond infrastructure to focus on digital literacy as a core capability.
A comprehensive study by Peking University, Sichuan Agricultural University, and China Unicom, released in January 2026, analysed digital literacy among rural residents across China’s counties based on mobile application usage data.
The study revealed significant insights that are directly applicable to Sarawak.
First, it found that the average gap in digital literacy between urban and rural areas was approximately 4.6 percentage points, with about 63 per cent of counties exhibiting higher urban than rural digital literacy.
However, the study also identified a more complex pattern: in some counties, rural digital literacy actually exceeded urban levels, suggesting that geography alone does not determine digital capability.
More importantly, the study distinguished between functional use and entertainment use.
In higher-literacy counties, residents spent significantly more time on applications related to information reading, transportation, financial payments, healthcare, and office productivity.
In lower-literacy counties, residents spent disproportionately more time on entertainment applications such as video streaming and gaming.
For transportation applications, for example, residents in higher-literacy counties used them 2.3 times more than those in lower-literacy counties; for financial payments and healthcare, the ratio was approximately 2:1.
This finding is crucial for Sarawak, where digital literacy efforts have focused primarily on basic access and safety awareness rather than on cultivating functional use of applications that can improve economic outcomes and quality of life.
The Chinese study suggests that digital literacy is not simply about whether people use the internet, but how they use it and that policy interventions must be designed to shift usage patterns away from passive entertainment toward active, productive engagement.
Japan: Future Literacy and Human-Centred Digital Transformation
Japan’s approach to digital transformation, as articulated in policy training workshops conducted by the Asia-Pacific Telecommunity in Tokyo in early 2026, emphasises not only connectivity but also what Japanese policymakers term “future literacy” that is the ability to understand and shape the consequences of technological development.
A key theme of Japan’s digital strategy is the importance of developing digital talent through industry-academia-government collaboration models.
The training workshops, which brought together senior officials from Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, Mongolia, and Nepal, highlighted Japan’s focus on digital connectivity technologies such as satellite communications and Open RAN to ensure connectivity in rural and remote island areas, with spillover effects in education, healthcare, and disaster management.
Japan’s emphasis on trust and safety, including critical infrastructure protection and cybersecurity measures, reflects a recognition that digital transformation must be balanced with security.
For Sarawak, Japan’s model underscores the importance of developing not just infrastructure but also the human capacity to use and govern technology responsibly.
The Mobile Futurium project, a German initiative with similar goals, further illustrates this focus on future competencies.
Funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, the Mobile Futurium project brings a mobile future and participation space to schools in rural areas, aiming to anchor future literacy skills in young people.
The project’s focus on helping students understand the consequences of technical developments in terms of risks and opportunities, and enabling them to use and further develop technologies in the interest of the common good, represents a model that Sarawak could adapt for its NADI centres.
Pakistan: The Double-Edged Sword of Rapid Connectivity Expansion
Pakistan’s recent digital transformation offers a cautionary tale about the challenges that accompany rapid connectivity expansion.
According to the Household Integrated Economic Survey conducted by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics, household internet access in Pakistan has risen dramatically from 34 per cent to 70 per cent.
This represents a transformative shift that has extended connectivity deep into rural districts and far-flung regions previously isolated from the national mainstream.
However, as The Nation newspaper noted in its analysis of the survey results, this expansion brings with it a complex mix of opportunities and challenges.
First-time internet users are entering a digital environment dominated by short-form content on platforms such as TikTok, Instagram Reels, and Facebook Shorts, where misinformation, propaganda, and cultural erosion can spread rapidly.
The risks of online fraud, scams, identity theft, hacking, and the misuse or leaking of personal data are also real and growing.
For Sarawak, Pakistan’s experience highlights the importance of pairing infrastructure expansion with comprehensive digital literacy programmes that equip new users with the knowledge to navigate the online world safely and responsibly.
As The Nation editorial argued, connectivity on its own is not enough; how it is managed will determine whether digital expansion becomes a national asset or a source of new vulnerabilities.
This is a lesson Sarawak would do well to heed as its SMART600 project brings connectivity to hundreds of thousands of new users.
Spain: The Evolution of Community Digital Centres
Spain’s Vuela Points Network, concentrated in the Andalusia region, provides a compelling example of how community digital centres can evolve over time to meet changing needs.
With more than 760 centres currently in operation, the Vuela Points Network has transitioned from digital literacy centres to advanced technology hubs equipped with teleworking and coworking areas, multimedia classrooms, digital fabrication laboratories, technology experimentation zones, and digital support services for citizens.
The recent modernisation of the network, completed in early 2026, involved the implementation of 83 new centres and the technological homogenisation of another 91 municipalities across the provinces of Córdoba, Jaén, Málaga, and Seville.
The modernisation included the supply and installation of technological equipment, furniture, signage, and advanced digital solutions, as well as the incorporation of tools to promote digital learning, entrepreneurship, employability, and the reduction of the digital divide.
In the past year alone, hundreds of thousands of participants attended training activities, demonstrating the social and territorial value of the network.
For Sarawak, Spain’s Vuela Points Network offers a model for how NADI centres might evolve beyond their current role as basic access points.
The Spanish experience demonstrates that community digital centres can serve as strategic public infrastructure for universal access to technology, particularly in rural municipalities and neighbourhoods with limited resources, and that their role can expand over time to include advanced services such as digital fabrication, coworking, and entrepreneurship support.
Italy: 5G-Enabled Digital Education for Vulnerable Communities
Italy’s approach to digital inclusion, supported by European Union funding, provides a sophisticated example of how advanced connectivity technologies can be leveraged to address educational inequality.
The European Union has invested €3.8 million (approximately RM18 million) in a project to deploy 5G hybrid private networks in Naples and Matera, launching a three-year digital education initiative.
The project, which runs from December 2024 to November 2026 with a total budget of €5 million, aims to improve socio-economic and geographical inclusion in these two (2) Italian cities through digital education.
The project encompasses six use cases, including smart agriculture learning centres, smart farms, artificial intelligence-driven innovation laboratories, telemedicine, and virtual classrooms.
By leveraging Internet of Things technology, 5G, and artificial intelligence, the project aims to improve agricultural education for local youth, promote community innovation, and foster sustainable development.
For Sarawak, the Italian model demonstrates how advanced connectivity can be combined with targeted educational initiatives to address the needs of vulnerable communities.
The focus on smart agriculture is particularly relevant for Sarawak, where many rural communities depend on agriculture for their livelihoods.
The Italian project’s integration of 5G, IoT, and AI in agricultural education represents a potential model for how Sarawak could leverage its SMART600 infrastructure to support rural economic development beyond basic connectivity.
Germany: Future Literacy and Rural Education
Germany’s Mobile Futurium project, funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research and implemented by the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in partnership with the Futurium Berlin, offers a distinctive approach to digital inclusion that emphasises the cultivation of future competencies.
The project aims to address the challenges posed by environmental change, artificial intelligence, and educational transformation by helping young people develop the ability to understand the consequences of technical developments in terms of risks and opportunities, and to use and further develop technologies in the interest of the common good.
To achieve this, the project has developed a mobile future and participation space that visits schools in rural areas, providing impulses for what the project terms “future literacy.”
The project’s participatory research component examines what future topics are considered relevant by students and teachers, and whether and how understanding of roles changes with the visit of the mobile facility.
For Sarawak, the German model offers a perspective on digital inclusion that goes beyond access to skills and focuses instead on the capacity to shape technological futures.
This approach aligns with Sarawak’s own ambitions to become a creator of technology through initiatives like the Sarawak AI Centre, but it also highlights the need for educational interventions that prepare young people not just to use technology but to understand and shape it.
South Africa: Digital Public Infrastructure and Inclusive Development
South Africa’s digital transformation strategy, as articulated by the United Nations Development Programme in early 2026, emphasises the importance of treating connectivity as a public utility and of ensuring that digital transformation is inclusive, intentional, and scaled.
The South Africa Business Initiative for Impact, anchored in the UN’s Global Africa Business Initiative, aims to accelerate digital transformation across key sectors of the economy, including fintech, e-commerce, agritech, artificial intelligence, and digital public infrastructure, to support sustainable growth, innovation, and job creation.
As Ahunna Eziakonwa, Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations, noted at the initiative’s launch, the digital divide in South Africa characterised it as high data costs, limited access to devices, low digital literacy, and unreliable infrastructure in rural and underserved communities should not be seen as a crisis but as an opportunity.
Eziakonwa emphasised that Africa’s youth and innovators are not waiting to be invited into the future; they are building it now, and when they are invested in and connected to capital and markets, the results are transformative.
For Sarawak, South Africa’s approach underscores the importance of viewing digital inclusion not as a technical problem but as an opportunity to empower communities and unleash entrepreneurial potential.
The emphasis on scaling small pilots into interoperable, secure, and rights-based platforms that provide access to essential services, financial tools, and economic opportunities is directly applicable to Sarawak’s own efforts to scale initiatives like S Pay Global and iSarawakCare.
Latin America: Argentina, Mexico, Colombia, and Cuba
Across Latin America, a diverse range of approaches to digital inclusion offers additional lessons for Sarawak.
Argentina has focused on the development of national fibre optic backbone infrastructure through its Argentina Conectada programme, which aims to connect all provincial capitals and major population centres with high-capacity fibre networks.
The Argentine experience highlights the importance of state investment in backbone infrastructure as a foundation for last-mile connectivity.
Mexico’s Compartel programme, which focuses on providing connectivity to rural and remote communities through a combination of public-private partnerships and community networks, offers a model for reaching the most isolated populations.
The Mexican experience demonstrates that community ownership and management of connectivity infrastructure can be effective in areas where commercial operators are reluctant to invest.
Colombia’s Vive Digital programme, which has been implemented across multiple phases since 2010, represents one of Latin America’s longest-running digital inclusion initiatives.
The programme’s evolution from a focus on infrastructure to a focus on applications and services demonstrates the importance of aligning connectivity investments with the development of relevant digital services.
Cuba’s unique approach to digital inclusion, characterised by state-controlled infrastructure and gradual liberalisation of internet access, offers a contrasting model.
The Cuban experience demonstrates that political and economic context profoundly shapes digital inclusion outcomes, and that connectivity alone is insufficient without the development of a broader digital ecosystem that includes content, services, and applications relevant to users’ lives.
Sarawak’s digital transformation strategy is a complex, ambitious, and in many respects successful undertaking.
The state government has demonstrated a strong capacity for strategic planning, infrastructure financing, and public-private collaboration that exceeds that of many developing regions.
The SMART600 project is nearing completion, digital government services are being aggressively digitalised, and the establishment of the Sarawak AI Centre positions the state as a leader in artificial intelligence and semiconductor innovation within the region.
The integration of digital payments into the economy is progressing rapidly, with S Pay Global showing impressive user and transaction growth that reflects genuine adoption rather than mere government promotion.
However, the critical success factor for the next phase of this transformation will be how effectively Sarawak addresses the non-infrastructural elements of digital inclusion.
The state has solved the problem of infrastructure financing, but it has not yet solved the problems of digital literacy, affordability, and the bridging of its dual-track digital economy.
To address these challenges, a fundamental shift in strategy is required, moving from a focus on access to a focus on meaningful, economically productive usage.
The international comparisons offer several specific lessons that Sarawak can adapt to its own context.
From Indonesia, Sarawak learns that achieving coverage is not the same as achieving quality.
The Indonesian government’s recognition that average speeds remain below regional averages and that 5G coverage remains limited offers a cautionary tale about the importance of not conflating coverage with meaningful connectivity.
Sarawak must ensure that the connectivity delivered through the SMART600 project is not just available but also fast, reliable, and affordable enough to support the applications that drive economic development.
From Singapore, Sarawak learns the importance of moving beyond connectivity to the integration of artificial intelligence with the Internet of Things to create responsive, predictive infrastructure.
While Sarawak is not yet ready for the sophisticated AIoT applications that characterise Singapore’s Smart Nation initiatives, the trajectory is clear: the future of digital governance lies in predictive, data-driven systems that can optimise resource allocation and service delivery in real time.
Sarawak’s investment in the Sarawak AI Centre is a step in this direction, but the centre’s work must be integrated with the state’s broader infrastructure and governance systems.
From Taiwan, Sarawak learns the value of AI-powered educational platforms in bridging urban-rural divides.
The Cool AI system’s focus on providing personalised learning pathways, reducing teacher administrative burden, and creating a shared ecosystem of teaching resources offers a model for how Sarawak can leverage its NADI centres to improve educational outcomes.
With 60 per cent of NADI centre users being students, the potential impact of such a system is enormous.
From China, Sarawak learns the importance of distinguishing between functional and entertainment use of digital technologies.
The Peking University study’s finding that higher-literacy counties have significantly higher usage of applications related to information, transportation, finance, healthcare, and productivity, while lower-literacy counties are dominated by entertainment, underscores the need for digital literacy programmes that cultivate purposeful, productive use of digital tools rather than simply teaching basic operation.
From Japan and Germany, Sarawak learns the value of future literacy, the capacity to understand and shape technological development.
As Sarawak invests in artificial intelligence and semiconductor manufacturing, it must also invest in the human capacity to understand, govern, and shape these technologies.
The Mobile Futurium project’s focus on helping young people develop the ability to understand the consequences of technical developments and to use technologies in the interest of the common good offers a model for how Sarawak can prepare its youth for a future in which they are not just users of technology but creators and shapers of it.
From Pakistan, Sarawak learns the risks of rapid connectivity expansion without commensurate investment in digital literacy.
The Pakistani experience of new users entering a digital environment dominated by misinformation, fraud, and cultural erosion offers a cautionary tale.
Sarawak must ensure that its digital literacy programmes prepare new users not just to connect but to navigate safely and critically.
From Spain, Sarawak learns how community digital centres can evolve over time.
The Vuela Points Network’s transition from digital literacy centres to advanced technology hubs with teleworking facilities, digital fabrication laboratories, and entrepreneurship support offers a model for the future evolution of NADI centres.
As household connectivity improves, NADI centres must evolve from places to access the internet to places to develop advanced skills and build businesses.
From Italy, Sarawak learns the potential of advanced connectivity to support targeted educational and economic development initiatives.
The 5G-enabled smart agriculture learning centres in Naples and Matera offer a model for how Sarawak could leverage its SMART600 infrastructure to support rural economic development in agriculture, which remains the livelihood basis for many rural communities.
From South Africa, Sarawak learns the importance of viewing digital inclusion not as a technical problem but as an opportunity to empower communities.
The emphasis on scaling small pilots into interoperable, secure platforms that provide access to essential services, financial tools, and economic opportunities aligns with Sarawak’s own ambitions for platforms like S Pay Global and iSarawakCare.
The call to treat connectivity as a public utility and to lower data costs, connect schools, and scale digital literacy for youth and women is directly applicable to Sarawak’s context.
From the diverse experiences of Argentina, Mexico, Colombia, and Cuba, Sarawak learns that context matters profoundly.
There is no single model of digital inclusion; each country must develop an approach that aligns with its political context, economic structure, and social needs.
Sarawak’s approach, which combines state investment in infrastructure with private sector operational management and a focus on local community centres, is appropriate to its context, but it must continue to evolve as the state’s digital landscape matures.
Sarawak’s digital transformation journey is a story of ambition, strategic investment, and tangible progress that deserves recognition.
From the expansion of the NADI centre network and the near-completion of the SMART600 towers to the pioneering work of the Sarawak AI Centre in artificial intelligence and semiconductor innovation, the state is laying foundations for a digital future that could serve as a model for other regions with similar geographical and demographic challenges.
The government’s ability to forge effective public-private partnerships and its willingness to invest heavily in infrastructure are commendable and have produced measurable results in expanding connectivity and digital service delivery.
Yet the ultimate success of this transformation will not be determined by the number of towers built, the sophistication of the artificial intelligence centre, or the transaction volume on S Pay Global.
It will be judged by the extent to which a farmer in a remote longhouse in Belaga, a student in a rural school in Kapit, and a small trader in a suburban market can meaningfully participate in and benefit from the digital economy.
The challenges of digital literacy, affordability, and the risk of a dual-track digital society are not insurmountable, but they require a shift in focus from infrastructure-led growth to a human-centred, capability-building approach.
The international comparisons presented demonstrate that the most successful digital inclusion strategies are those that combine infrastructure investment with comprehensive digital literacy programmes, that move beyond access to meaningful use, and that ensure that the benefits of digital transformation are shared across all segments of society.
As Sarawak progresses toward its goal of a fully digital government by 2030, the vision must be one of inclusion, where digital community centres, artificial intelligence diagnostic tools, and cashless payment systems all converge to create a society where digital transformation is not a force of differentiation but a tide that lifts all communities, regardless of their location or socio-economic status.
The coming years will be critical in determining whether Sarawak’s digital future is one of shared prosperity or a deeper, more technologically entrenched divide.
The choices made today about where to invest, what skills to prioritise, and whose needs to centre will shape the digital landscape for generations to come.
By learning from the experiences of Indonesia, Singapore, Taiwan, China, Japan, Pakistan, Spain, Italy, Germany, South Africa, and the nations of Latin America, Sarawak can chart a course that is both ambitious and inclusive, leveraging the power of digital technology to create opportunities for all its citizens.
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