UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD) has published Policy Brief No. 120, “Preparing to seize artificial intelligence opportunities with strategic national policies,” drawing on its Technology and Innovation Report 2025. The brief’s message is that AI is reshaping competitiveness quickly—and that developing countries, in particular, cannot rely on ad-hoc pilots alone. Instead, they need a coherent national approach that ties AI to development priorities and builds the underlying conditions for adoption at scale.
A central contribution of the brief is a practical readiness lens. UNCTAD argues that AI progress depends on three connected “leverage points”:
- Infrastructure: reliable electricity, connectivity, data centres, and high-speed networks;
- Data: access to relevant domain data, storage and processing capacity, and governance for privacy and security; and
- Skills: from basic digital literacy to advanced data science and AI-specific capabilities.
The brief emphasizes that these elements work as a system—progress in one area is constrained if the others lag.
The policy direction recommended is deliberately two-speed. In the near term, countries may gain the most by supporting AI adoption for specific sectoral needs (where benefits are concrete and capacity constraints are manageable). In parallel, they should develop longer-term strategies to steer domestic AI development—otherwise latecomers risk becoming permanent technology takers with limited policy choices.
To help decision-makers benchmark where they stand, UNCTAD references its Frontier Technologies Readiness Index and an analytical framing that groups countries by relative AI adoption and development capacity. The intent is not to rank for its own sake, but to guide “catch-up” pathways and to discourage one-size-fits-all policy borrowing. The brief stresses that successful national AI policy blends high-level direction with implementation tools across industrial and innovation policy, data governance, workforce development, and digital infrastructure.
