For governments across emerging economies, one of the central challenges of the next decade is how to meet the growing demand for better public services with limited resources. Advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) offer a unique opportunity to leapfrog legacy development models and build smarter, more inclusive states and better public services from the ground up. Unlike developed nations, often encumbered by costly IT infrastructure, the Emerging Economies can build AI-native systems, bypassing lengthy modernisation processes to create immediate public value.
A recent report by PricewaterhouseCoopers, commissioned by Google and titled: ‘AI Works for Government’ demonstrates that broad AI adoption in the public sector can yield a powerful ‘triple dividend’ for developing countries. The report concludes that by 2035, this strategic embrace of AI can deliver significant, mutually reinforcing benefits across government efficiency, service delivery, and the wider economy.
AI adoption in the public sector also leads to new challenges for the delivery of public services such as the risk of weak institutional capacity, the potential for exclusion, reduced accountability, critical failures and cyber threats, and privacy and data protection concerns.
Building on the successful model of the 2024 Wilton Park event: ‘Successfully harnessing AI in Africa’, this dialogue will convene both the architects of public sector AI strategy and the practitioners responsible for its implementation to discuss how to translate this potential into reality, whilst navigating the risks.
In partnership with
