For many low-income countries, perhaps the biggest deficit they face is the lack of human skills that build economic growth. New artificial intelligence tools increase access to a wide range of skills. Thus, the World Bank provides a flagship World Development Report 2026 for “The Promise of Artificial Intelligence.”
For an obvious example, consider an agricultural extension agent, who is funded by the government to travel the countryside providing insights on how output can be improved. WDR wrote:
United Food and Agriculture Organization Planning Guidelines
Nations (FAO) for agricultural extension services determine one agent for every 500-2,000 rural inhabitants, depending on the country’s production system and population density. But the reality on the ground falls short. Recent estimates show that in Nigeria, for example, one public extension agent can serve anywhere from 5,000 to 10,000 farmers. In India, which has one of the largest public extension systems in the world, with about 120,000 extension professionals — the ratio of extension workers to farmers is about 1 to 5,000 … The gap in service delivery is evident not only in the number of extension agents available to farmers, but also in the quality and responsiveness of the advice they provide. General extension advice tends to be structurally general (designed for average
farmers in the average season) …If a local farmer has some access to a smartphone in the nearest village, and can ask AI tools about local conditions, crops, and what can be used for others, including the ability to send images of the landscape and how the crop is growing, it can make the difference between poverty and malnutrition in a given year—or not. One experiment with an AI advisor in Ethiopia providing locally tailored advice improved wheat yields by 38%.
According to the report, low-income countries are unlikely to become important players in the near term in developing the most sophisticated AI models, or producing the most sophisticated semiconductor chips. But in some contexts, the use of AI often benefits those with less experience or skills, as workers, companies, and governments have the most room to gain access to knowledge and skills. Some companies and governments in low-income countries are already using these tools, including using chatbots for questions and feedback about public services and from corporate customers. Small AIs can be “built for one narrow task, such as identifying crop diseases or screening medical images.” The report noted:
Many developing countries face a shortage of skilled workers. AI can help by allowing less experienced workers to perform more advanced cognitive tasks, thereby shifting some work from scarce specialists and making existing workers more productive. First, if AI automates more expert tasks in an occupation, it will reduce entry requirements
for people to do work in that occupation. There is evidence that levels are rising in cognitive occupations, including customer support, professional writing, and software development. Second, AI can shift assigned cognitive tasks to adjacent occupations that employ low-skilled people, such as shifting medical image screening tasks from rare medical specialists to lower-level healthcare providers. Third, AI makes people more productive in what they currently do. For example, generative AI tools improve the quality of instruction in schools by supporting teachers with lesson planning, generating learning materials that match students’ skill levels, and providing faster feedback on student work.WDR is open about acknowledging some practical issues. AI will also disrupt some industries in low-income countries: for example, AI agents are likely to replace some call center workers. The benefits of AI require complementary investments in physical and human infrastructure. Low-income countries may wish to have a process for adapting existing open-source AI tools for local use and/or for defining certain AI tools as trustworthy. The use of AI in schools can be a mixed blessing, but the possibilities for special tutoring when teachers are scarce seem to be many.
Living in the US higher education environment, as I understand it, there are many concerns about the use of AI in writing research papers, or writing novels. The main concern is that the use of AI leads to the loss of valuable things that cannot be done by humans. The issue is important. But the WDR warns that the benefits and potential trade-offs may differ in low-income developing economies.