By 2030 AI will measurably influence and impact more than 8.5 billion people, across all sectors, and human & earth diverse ecosystems on an unprecedented scale. According to a study published in Nature, AI could help achieve 79 % of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), more specifically it can enable the accomplishment of 134 targets across all the goals, but it may also inhibit 59 targets.

Since sustainable development problems affect all countries in different ways on macro and micro levels, that means each country is developing its own scientific AI expertise on a given set of development problems. Some of these overlap across different continents and regions, some are location-specific. Therefore, there is an opportunity to connect the research groups working on this topic and tap into different solutions, case studies, skills and competences in the domain of development as well as AI.