MyDIGITAL Corporation and Petrosains Bring AI and STEM Education to Sarawak Indigenous Communities
TLDR
- MyDIGITAL Corporation and Petrosains have launched a joint digital-inclusion programme reaching indigenous students in Sarawak’s interior.
- Free AI awareness and STEM activities are being delivered through Petrosains’ Discovery Centre and the Rakyat Digital platform.
- Target communities include the Penan, Iban, Kayan, Kenyah and Lun Bawang groups across Miri and surrounding districts.
- Programme rolls out under the Malaysia Digital 2030 (MD2030) Action Plan, with expansion to Kelantan, Pahang and Johor planned.
- Real teeth: native-speaker outreach, state education department coordination, and a CEO-level commitment from both organisations.
MyDIGITAL Corporation, the agency tasked with operationalising Malaysia’s national digital economy agenda, has partnered with Petrosains, the PETRONAS-run science discovery centre, to bring AI and STEM education to indigenous students in Sarawak. The joint programme made its public debut at the Karnival Pendidikan Murid Peribumi Penan Peringkat Negeri Sarawak held in Miri on 1 July 2026, putting both organisations in front of one of Malaysia’s most connectivity-starved demographics.
For the launch cohort, students from the Penan, Iban, Kayan, Kenyah and Lun Bawang communities spent the day cycling through Petrosains’ hands-on STEM demonstrations while MyDIGITAL walked them through free digital learning resources on the Rakyat Digital platform. The outreach sits squarely inside MyDIGITAL’s “Rakyat Digital” initiative, which is the public-facing arm of the MD2030 Action Plan, Malaysia’s national roadmap to build an inclusive AI-powered economy by the end of the decade.
Bridging the Digital Divide for Indigenous Learners
The pitch from both CEOs is that inclusivity begins with access, not aspiration. MyDIGITAL Corporation Chief Executive Officer Adrian Marcellus framed the collaboration as a deliberate move to extend digital and AI literacy to the Orang Asli and Sarawakian indigenous segments, communities that frequently sit outside the rollout footprint of mainstream edtech programmes. Petrosains Chief Executive Officer Ezarisma Azni Mohamad pointed out that for many Orang Asli and indigenous families in Sarawak, access to STEM and digital learning can be a genuine catalyst for unlocking potential that would otherwise stay hidden.
The substance matters more than the slogans. Petrosains brings the physical kit: science demonstrations, Discovery Rover outreach, and trained facilitators who can run the sessions in a school setting. MyDIGITAL brings the digital curriculum layer and the policy mandate to scale it. Together the two organisations cover both the offline engagement problem (you need someone on the ground in Long San or Bario) and the online learning problem (you need a structured, free, locally relevant digital resource once the team leaves). That combination is rarer than it sounds in Malaysian edtech CSR.
Nationwide Expansion Plans Under MD2030
The Miri launch is positioned as the pilot, not the finish line. Both organisations confirmed the collaboration will expand nationwide through similar outreach programmes in Kelantan, Pahang and Johor, working alongside the respective state education departments. The choice of states is deliberate: Kelantan and Pahang both have substantial Orang Asli populations in their inland districts, while Johor anchors the southern peninsular reach and connects with the EduSTEM push across the Malaysian Smart School network.
For Malaysian tech watchers, the more interesting signal is the policy alignment. By tying the programme explicitly to MD2030, MyDIGITAL is converting a CSR activity into a deliverable that the government can claim credit for in its AI economy narrative. That makes it easier for the agency to justify recurring budget lines and for Petrosains to keep pulling PETRONAS funding into non-oil-and-gas education work. It also means the programme has a higher chance of surviving leadership changes at either organisation.
Our Take
The MyDIGITAL-Petrosains partnership is at least trying to do the harder version: pairing a credible digital curriculum with a credible field outreach operator and pushing the work into communities that mainstream programmes routinely miss. That said, the announcement is still light on numbers. There is no headcount of students reached, no timeline for the Kelantan-Pahang-Johor rollout beyond “will expand”, and no clarity on whether the AI literacy modules are being delivered in Bahasa Malaysia, English, or the local indigenous languages. Until those gaps get filled, the real impact is still a press kit, not a measured outcome.
The other thing worth watching is whether this stays a partnership or gets swallowed by one side. MyDIGITAL has the policy muscle, Petrosains has the field credibility, and PETRONAS has the chequebook. If the structure holds, the programme could become one of the more useful pieces of Malaysia’s inclusive AI narrative. If one party drifts, the Miri launch ends up as a one-off photo-op, which is the default outcome for most Malaysian tech CSR launches anyway.
