Artificial intelligence offers developing countries a rare opportunity to accelerate progress at a time when global development is growing at its weakest pace in 75 years, according to the World Bank's World Development Report 2026: The Promise of Artificial Intelligence.
The report urges governments to follow an 'adopt, adapt, advance' framework. Rather than building trillion-parameter general models, developing economies should adopt existing tools, adapt them to local languages and contexts, and only later advance toward frontier systems when complementary conditions exist.
The World Bank highlights that AI is diffusing far faster than previous general-purpose technologies: while steam power took about 80 years to reach low-income countries and the internet about 20 years, ChatGPT reached half of all middle-income-country traffic within just six months of its launch.
To capture the benefits, the report says countries need reliable infrastructure, education, strong institutions and local-language data. It casts government in three roles: enabler of digital foundations, user of AI in public services, and regulator that prevents harm while avoiding fragmented barriers.
