Governing with AI in low- and middle-income countries

Artificial Intelligence is moving quickly towards deployment. For low- and middle-income country governments, this creates a major opportunity: to strengthen public services, improve the targeting of scarce resources, anticipate shocks, and make better use of fragmented public data. The question is whether governments can shape its use in ways that are responsible, effective, and grounded in public purpose.

AI could help governments improve health system planning, strengthen climate adaptation, support food-security forecasting, and reduce administrative bottlenecks. But these gains are not automatic. Poorly designed systems can reproduce bias, deepen exclusion, weaken accountability, and erode public trust. Models built primarily on data from high-income countries may perform poorly in other settings. Weak data systems, limited institutional capacity and inadequate safeguards can mean that errors go undetected until they affect the people least able to challenge them.

This conference will bring together a select group of ministers, senior public officials, technology leaders, researchers, funders and policy experts for a high-level discussion on how AI can be used responsibly, at scale, and in ways that improve public outcomes.

Convened by the International Growth Centre (IGC), the World Bank and the LSE Data Science Institute, the conference will focus on the institutional, technical, and political choices that determine whether AI strengthens public institutions or bypasses them. Discussions aim to move beyond broad claims about AI’s potential and examine what governments need to get right: data governance, public-sector capability, accountability, human rights protections, local adaptation, and the sequencing of reforms.

Through high-level panels, practical case studies and focused discussion, the event will explore questions including:

• What public-sector problems is AI genuinely well suited to solve?
• What institutional capabilities do governments need to deploy AI responsibly and at scale?
• How can AI support better decisions in public health and climate adaptation?
• How can governments manage risks of bias, exclusion, and error when public data systems are fragmented or incomplete?
• What does a human-rights approach to AI governance mean in practice for developing-country governments?
• How can AI build human capability and strengthen public institutions, rather than erode local capacity?
• What role should international organisations, technology companies, researchers and funders play in supporting responsible AI adoption?

The conference will examine how governments can build the capabilities, partnerships and guardrails needed to deploy AI in the public interest. Its aim is to chart a more practical path for AI in government: one that is ambitious about technology, realistic about institutional constraints, and clear about the rights and public outcomes it is meant to serve.

This event is invite-only. You can request an invite here, and if you would like to discuss broader collaboration, please reach out to Shahrukh Wani at s.rukh@lse.ac.uk.

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