The Global South AI Diffusion Playbook

AI is advancing rapidly, but its benefits aren’t spreading evenly. While adoption surges in the Global North, economies across the Global South face a widening diffusion gap driven by infrastructure constraints, institutional fragmentation, talent shortages, and misaligned procurement systems.

This playbook moves beyond the question of AI readiness to tackle the harder challenge: how to embed AI into everyday economic activity, public services, and enterprise workflows at scale. It introduces a practical framework built around five interconnected system dimensions (infrastructure and stack pathways, data governance and trust, institutions and procurement, skills and organisational readiness, and market shaping) and maps a two-phase roadmap for government action, from enabling early diffusion to institutionalising adoption across the economy.

Designed for policymakers, development practitioners, and technology leaders working in or with the Global South, this resource offers a systems-level approach to closing the gap between AI ambition and real-world impact.