This post was drafted with AI from my event notes and approved by me.
Next month I’ll be in Kota Kinabalu for the first Sabah Digital Summit, on 25 and 26 November 2026 at the Sabah International Convention Centre.
The summit’s theme is “Unlocking Borneo’s Next”, and I like how much ambition those three words carry. The aim is to give Sabah its own regional platform for shaping its digital economy. It will bring together government leaders and policymakers, industry, technology innovators, investors, academia and entrepreneurs. There is also a bigger idea behind it: to strengthen Sabah’s place as the digital gateway to BIMP-EAGA and the wider ASEAN digital ecosystem. Given where Sabah sits, that ambition makes a lot of sense to me.
The summit was initiated by the Office of the Deputy State Secretary of Sabah and is organised by Yayasan Bumiputra Sabah, with YBS Unifinder and PCommerce running it.
I’ll be joining on the second day, Thursday 26 November, for Panel Discussion 1, “The Future Ready Frontier – AI, Sustainable Technology & Responsible Innovation”, from 10.45am to 12.15pm. Each of us on the panel will give a short ten-minute talk before we open up the discussion. My proposed topic is “From AI Strategy to AI Impact: Building an Inclusive and Sustainable AI Economy”.
The topic reflects something I keep coming back to. Malaysia now has a clear strategy for AI in the National AI Action Plan 2026-2030. A strategy only matters when people can see its effects in their own lives and livelihoods, whether that’s a small business owner, a rural clinic or a young graduate looking for work. An inclusive AI economy means those places are part of the story from the start, not added at the end. A sustainable one means we build it to last.
Ten minutes isn’t long, so I’ll keep it practical, and I’m looking forward to learning from the other panellists and from the people of Sabah who are doing this work every day.
If you’re attending, please come and say hello. If you’d like to read the plan before then, it’s at https://ai.gov.my/aiactionplan2030.