TajRupt has opened its office at Bukhoro Palace in Dushanbe.

An official opening ceremony of the office that took place yesterday was attended by Minister of Industry and New Technologies Sherali Kabir, National Bank of Tajikistan Chairman Hokim Kholiqzoda, Presidential Aide on Economic Issues Nematullo Hikmatullozoda, members of parliament, entrepreneurs and bankers.  

At the beginning of the event, TajRupt founder and chairman Azizjon Azimi acquainted the guests with the activities of the center.     

Then, successful graduates of TajRupt courses presented their own projects to those present.

The guests were told in detail about the TajRupt program aimed at using of artificial intelligence in the banking sector, which is being implemented jointly with Spitamen Bank.  It was noted that artificial intelligence can independently analyze the creditworthiness of a borrower.  

TajRupt is a nongovernmental organization with a mission of empowering the youth to upend Tajikistan’s development trajectory.  The organization brings this mission into reality through two youth hubs: Extracurricular Resource Center (ERC), and tajrupt.ai (TAI).  The ERC was launched in 2017 and has been funded by the National Endowment for Democracy, UNICEF, Open Society Foundations, and other institutional donors.  TAI was launched in 2019 and is funded by the Islamic Development Bank’s Science, Technology, and Innovation Fund. 

ERC enables high school and university students to develop critical thinking skills and implement social impact projects.  To-date, 305 students have taken ERC courses ranging from history and economics, to arts and philosophy.  These students have implemented 85 projects impacting thousands of local residents.  The latest version of the curriculum is currently being tested with 100 enrolled students. 

TAI is Central Asia’s first artificial intelligence lab with an objective of transforming Tajikistan into a regional hub for machine learning education and entrepreneurship.  At TAI, high school and university students have access to a supervised ML curriculum incorporating statistics, calculus, and programming in Python.  Additionally, TAI is implementing an applied research project on deploying ML in financial services sector.

Azizjon Azimi, 23, is founder and chairman of TajRupt.  In 2018, he was put on the Forbes list of “30 Under 30.”  He is Master of Science student at Stanford Graduate School of Business and at Harvard Kennedy School.