North Macedonia Launches Vezilka, Its First National AI Center
By Suad Seferi ·
SKOPJE — North Macedonia has officially launched Vezilka, the country’s first national artificial intelligence center, presenting it as a major step toward digital modernization and stronger ties with Europe’s AI ecosystem. Backed by the European Union, the government, and the Faculty of Computer Science and Engineering (FINKI), the project is designed to support AI solutions in healthcare, education, energy, agriculture, and public administration. According to officials, Vezilka will also help digitize the Macedonian language corpus and develop a large language model that can be used by institutions. The center is being framed as an important national platform, with access to European supercomputing resources and support for startups, researchers, and companies. In government messaging, the launch is being presented as a strategic move that places North Macedonia more firmly on the European AI map. But the launch has also raised a serious question: why were civil society organizations working on AI not invited? That omission is not a small detail, because civic groups have been among the loudest voices calling for transparency, accountability, and responsible AI governance in the country. In a field that will increasingly affect public services, rights, and access to data, excluding civil society gives the impression that the project was designed from the top down rather than as a genuinely national effort. This matters because AI policy is not just about infrastructure and supercomputers. It is also about rules, oversight, public trust, and who gets a seat at the table when the technology starts shaping institutions. If Vezilka is meant to be a serious long-term platform, it will need more than technical ambition; it will need openness, broader participation, and real engagement with the people and organizations already working on ethical AI in North Macedonia. For now, Vezilka stands as both a milestone and a warning. It shows that North Macedonia is moving quickly to build its AI capacity, but it also shows how easily a national project can lose credibility if key civic actors are not included from the start.