Development cooperation is overdue for a tech upgrade. How can development cooperation reform its organizational structure and programming on the ground? The new technological disruption is more than just an efficiency plug-in; the sector needs a complete transformation. Throughout this portfolio, I discuss how.
In collaboration with Deutsche Welle (DW) Akademie and UNDP, we are developing an open, AI-powered assistant that supports development practitioners, consultants, and policy advisors in their programming, advisory, and policy-design work on mitigating political polarization. Rising polarization erodes institutional trust and, as the UNDP Human Development Report documents, slows progress across development goals. Yet the guidance practitioners rely on still lives in static, 100-page PDFs that are rarely updated, hard to navigate, and impossible to adapt to fast-moving, low-resource settings. Our tool replaces that model with a conversational interface: users describe their situation and receive context-specific guidance, a draft action plan, a risk assessment, and a stakeholder map, each grounded in vetted evidence. The tool builds on a multi-agent architecture: a retrieval agent runs optimized search; a context agent adapts outputs to the user's role, sector, and country; a scenario agent generates branching decision simulations; a structured-output agent drafts action plans and risk matrices; a quality-assurance agent fact-checks every output against the repository; and a translation agent delivers multilingual access. Each agent is independently testable and upgradable.
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Advocating for social inclusion in the design of smart cities, on our digital platform, we documented the work of Canadian cities as they went through the process of developing applications for the Smart Cities Challenge Canada.
Link here →The sector can no longer rely on outdated static PDFs for its advisory and programming work. But more than plug-in efficiency tools, the technological disruption requires a complete rethinking of how the sector operates and offers democracy support.
Agentic AI is arriving in development cooperation before the sector can govern it. Germany should play a leadership role in the sector's technological transformation.
Knowledge and toolkits are still often published as PDFs and downloads. But where are the voice assistants, interactive models, and intelligent early-warning systems?
AI can transform media development programming by enabling smarter early warning systems to protect journalists, especially against fast-moving threats.
Today's public policy schools need to engage with citizens, understand technological change, and look at problems horizontally.
Digitizing small and medium enterprises in Turkey amid crisis.
Fostering youth employment across the MENA region in a socially inclusive industrial transition.
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