Dr. Semuhi Sinanoglu
Portfolio 06

AI & tech for development cooperation

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.

9 outputs · all portfolios · the wall
Initiatives
Depolarization Toolkit · 2026-28 · IDOS with UNDP + DW Akademie

Depolarization Toolkit: an agentic AI framework

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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Social Impact · 2017-18 · Montreal

CityInclusive

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.

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Research lines

AI and digitalization

A tech upgrade for development cooperation

The sector can no longer rely on outdated static PDFs for its advisory and programming work.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.

Op-ed Reforming the development sector for agentic AI IDOS Current Column 2026

Digitalization and inclusive economies

From this portfolio

Highlights and field notes

Bridges

From the other portfolios

01 · 3 shared

(Countering) authoritarian propaganda

  • E-government tools, authoritarian propaganda, and regime support
  • Reality check on donor expectations: do GovTech initiatives help autocrats?
  • Countering information pollution to protect democracy