Our goals

VEZILKA's mission is to accelerate the adoption of trustworthy, ethical and responsible artificial intelligence through concrete, applicable solutions with high social and economic impact — and to position North Macedonia as a regional centre for applied AI, firmly connected to the European research network.

Strategic objectives

1

Strengthen the national AI ecosystem

Support AI solutions across the five strategic sectors — health, energy, culture & language, agriculture and the digital transformation of the public sector.

2

Provide AI services

Deliver expert, advisory AI services tailored to start-ups, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and public-sector institutions.

3

Develop and retain AI talent

Build a sustainable pipeline of AI experts through education, hands-on training and involvement in real projects of national importance.

4

Support national AI policy

Help government create AI strategies, policies and legislation aligned with the EU AI Act and GDPR, contributing to trustworthy AI in the public sector.

What success looks like

The successful implementation of VEZILKA will deliver measurable outcomes for the national AI ecosystem:

  • A nationally integrated AI innovation ecosystem with active participation from academia, industry and public administration.
  • Regular use of AI services by national start-ups, SMEs and public-sector entities across the key sectors.
  • A sustainable AI talent pipeline built through training at all levels — from foundational AI literacy to advanced researcher upskilling.
  • Functional integration into the EuroHPC and Pharos ecosystems, with participation in joint activities, tools and datasets, and collaboration with peer Antennas in Serbia and Cyprus.
  • A concrete contribution to national AI policy and the legislative processes related to artificial intelligence.

The five strategic sectors

VEZILKA creates curated, sector-specific “development playgrounds” — each with access to specialised datasets, pre-built models, custom workflows and advanced tools — to accelerate progress in:

Health

Developing AI models to support medical diagnostics, optimise hospital processes and predict operational challenges, improving the quality of care and enabling personalised, preventive medicine.

Energy

Building models that increase the stability of the electricity grid as renewable sources grow — with high-precision forecasting of solar and wind generation and intelligent demand prediction for more efficient management of energy resources.

Culture & Language

Systematically creating and refining Macedonian-language corpora to develop a foundational Large Language Model (LLM) for the Macedonian context — capturing our tradition, culture, history and legislation, and addressing the “low-resource” challenge for the Macedonian language.

Public Administration

Using AI to automate and improve public services — issuing certificates, processing requests and informing citizens through intelligent assistants — and increasing transparency and efficiency in the management of public resources, including public finance and procurement.

Agriculture

Advancing smart farming by integrating climate, soil and yield data to provide timely recommendations for planting, irrigation and pest protection — increasing productivity and sustainability, with particular attention to the small parcels that characterise Macedonian agriculture.

Our long-term vision

Our most desired scenario is for VEZILKA to grow from an EU-funded project into a self-sustaining national centre for artificial intelligence that naturally unites academia, industry, start-ups and institutions — recognised as part of the European network of AI Factories, with its own research, models and resources contributing at regional and European level. Above all, our greatest success would be to keep and inspire the young generation of talented engineers, researchers and innovators to build their future in Macedonia.