OneMekong About OneMekong
OneMekong is a regional, open digital innovation lab co-creating AI- and data-powered solutions for water, climate, agriculture, connectivity and youth across the six Mekong countries.
We are living through an age of converging crises. Border tensions are rising. The global shift away from fossil fuels is reshaping economies and creating new pressures. Forests and ecosystems are disappearing at alarming speed. Food systems are under strain. And development financing is no longer sufficient to match the scale and urgency of the challenges before us.
The old model of development, slow, fragmented, and confined within institutional silos, is no longer enough. We cannot solve today's interconnected problems with yesterday's disconnected approaches.
AI represents the next evolution in how we approach development. It is not here to replace human judgment, but to strengthen it. AI can help us see patterns earlier, make better decisions faster, and respond with greater precision, coordination, and care.
But technology alone is not the answer. The future must be built together. Communities, scientists, governments, youth, and innovators must work side by side, combining AI with lived experience, local wisdom, and sound science.
Our mission now is clear: build boldly, test rapidly, learn openly, and scale what works. The future will belong to those who can connect knowledge, technology, and people fast enough to turn crisis into resilience and innovation into hope.
We work openly and across borders. Every initiative is co-designed with local communities and partner organisations, prototyped in real contexts, and released as open-source software, open data or shared playbooks. We don't drop solutions in — we build the capacity for partners to run, adapt and extend them.
Code, data, models and methods are released openly so partners can build on our work.
Every project pairs technical partners with local community organisations from day one.
We treat the Mekong as one connected river network system across China, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, and Viet Nam.
Every initiative defines measurable outcomes — water saved, lives improved, learners reached.
We use AI, satellite, drone, IoT and digital-twin tools only when they make a clear difference on the ground.
We commit to multi-year partnerships, not one-off pilots that disappear.