Albania's AI Minister Diella - “Sunshine, Lollipops, and Procurement”
Nominee: Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama and the Government of Albania for appointing the world's first artificial intelligence minister to handle public procurement, apparently believing that corruption could be solved by handing government decision-making to a chatbot wearing traditional Albanian costume.
Reported by: Alice Taylor, POLITICO Europe, and AFP reporting - September 11, 2025
The Innovation
Prime Minister Edi Rama unveiled Albania's revolutionary approach to solving centuries of governmental corruption: replace human ministers with artificial intelligence. Meet Diella (meaning “sunshine” in Albanian), a virtual minister, made of pixels and code, who will single-handedly transform Albania's notoriously corrupt public procurement system. The AI appears as a young woman dressed in traditional Albanian clothing, because apparently nothing says “cutting-edge governance” quite like dressing your government algorithm in folk costume. Rama confidently declared that Diella would make public tenders “100 percent incorruptible” and “perfectly transparent” - the kind of sweeping proclamation that suggests either revolutionary technological breakthrough or profound misunderstanding of how both corruption and AI systems actually work.
The Revolutionary Appointment
At the Socialist Party assembly, Rama introduced Diella as “the first member not physically present, but virtually created by artificial intelligence,” making Albania the world's first country to have an AI minister. Not a minister *for* AI, mind you, but an actual artificial intelligence serving as a government minister. Diella had already been helping citizens navigate the e-Albania platform, where she'd successfully issued 36,600 digital documents and provided nearly 1,000 services. Clearly, her impressive performance at basic digital customer service qualified her for the rather more complex task of overseeing all government procurement decisions for a nation of 2.8 million people.
The Grand Vision
Rama explained that procurement decisions would be taken “out of the ministries” and placed entirely in Diella's virtual hands, as she is “the servant of public procurement.” The AI minister will evaluate tenders and have the authority to “hire talents here from all over the world” whilst breaking down “the fear of prejudice and rigidity of the administration.” This represents either the most ambitious deployment of AI in governmental decision-making in human history, or a spectacular demonstration of faith that artificial intelligence has mastered the subtle art of detecting human deception, evaluating complex proposals, and navigating the labyrinthine world of public contracting - skills that have challenged human experts for generations.
Why This Nomination Matters
Albania's appointment of an AI minister represents the collision of governmental desperation with technological optimism on a scale rarely seen outside of science fiction. The country has indeed long battled with corruption, particularly in public administration and in the area of public procurement, as repeatedly highlighted by the European Union. However, the solution of handing procurement oversight to an AI system - no matter how well-dressed in traditional costume - demonstrates touching faith that artificial intelligence has somehow transcended the fundamental challenges of transparency, accountability, and human oversight that define good governance. When your anti-corruption strategy involves removing humans from the decision-making process entirely, you've either solved the eternal problem of governmental accountability or created an entirely new category of problems involving algorithmic transparency, AI bias, and the rather pressing question of who exactly is responsible when your digital minister makes questionable procurement decisions.
Sources: POLITICO Europe: Albania appoints world's first AI-made minister | AFP: Albania appoints AI-generated minister to avoid corruption