The World Development Report 2026 assesses what artificial intelligence (AI), as a general-purpose technology, means for 5.6-billion people living in low- and middle-income countries and how it could address development challenges that have resisted solutions for decades.

Advancing the AI frontier that relies on semiconductors, data centers, AI-ready training data, and top-level research talent is out of reach for most developing countries in the near term. But adopting AI that is available in the market is not enough because AI’s effectiveness depends on the local context. Adapting AI to solve defined problems in developing countries can do in a decade what might have otherwise taken a century – diagnosing disease, growing small businesses, advising farmers, and delivering public services.

To seize AI’s potential, governments will need to keep strengthening the analogue and digital complements that power AI solutions: electricity, internet connectivity, and foundational skills, but also access to compute infrastructure and local language data. Countries will also need to establish frameworks to procure, monitor and evaluate AI applications so that pilots that work well can be deployed on a larger scale.

To manage the risks, countries can leverage voluntary standards to facilitate trustworthy AI and turn to existing regulations when markets fail to protect people against the harms of AI. This report urges policy makers in developing countries to be blinded by neither the hype nor the hysteria surrounding AI in the global headlines. It reminds them instead that adopting and adapting AI—with care but without delay—and eventually advancing AI could enable developing countries to solve problems that have resisted solutions for decades.

Report by the World Bank