Innovators, especially those in the Global South, are too often locked out of funding and opportunity despite offering solutions to some of the world’s most pressing challenges.

Malaria was not on Masaki Umeda’s mind when his drone startup, SORA Technology, launched in 2020 in Nagoya. He and his colleagues were focused on getting medical supplies to hard-to-reach parts of Africa. But after talking to health ministries, they realised their AI powered tools would be more useful in the fight against a disease that kills over half a million people on the continent every year.

The drones fly over targeted areas and collect raw data. AI tools then identify the location and characteristics of bodies of water, including turbidity, temperature ranges, and nearby vegetation, all of which help classify the risk of mosquito breeding sites. When shared with government agencies, this information allows ground spraying companies to focus on high-risk spots rather than blanketing large areas indiscriminately.

In a world of shrinking aid and squeezed international budgets, cost effectiveness has become a priority for cash strapped governments. The solutions offered by innovators and start-ups are accordingly more valuable than ever. SORA Technology’s potential to save both lives and money led to Umeda being invited to the UN’s 2026 Science and Technology Forum as a featured innovator, alongside other early-stage developers tackling real world problems, from e waste recycling in Zambia to solar energy in Argentina and community renewable energy hubs in Nigeria.

Li Junhua, UN Under Secretary General for Economic and Social Affairs, said the innovations pointed to a broader lesson: that progress is most effective when paired with collaboration, local ownership, and a clear pathway to scale.

Extraordinary Talent Locked Out

The Featured Innovator programme aims to raise awareness of talent in developing countries that goes untapped for want of finance, technology, and opportunity. Lok Bahadur Thapa, President of the UN Economic and Social Council, told the Forum that the shortfall was not a gap in innovation but a gap in inclusion. Too many innovators remain disconnected from finance and markets, he said, and too many solutions never reach the communities that need them most.

Rita Orji, a professor of computer science and Canada Research Chair in Persuasive Technology at Dalhousie University, knows the obstacle well. Raised in a remote village in southeastern Nigeria without electricity or running water, she had never seen a computer up close before enrolling at Nnamdi Azikiwe University. She told the Forum that she had chosen the field hoping it could change things for her community, learning to code and think computationally without owning a machine of her own. She graduated with first class honours.

Ms Orji’s story illustrates a wider pattern of talented people across the Global South who are excluded not for lack of ability but for lack of access.

Technically Brilliant, Developmentally Useless

Ms Orji argues that digital tools designed within the Global South, by people who live and work there, would be far more likely to prove effective. The prevailing model, in her view, runs backwards: technology designed in the north, deployed in the south, and only belatedly adapted and made affordable. She believes the Global South should not be treated as a late adopter of intelligent design conceived elsewhere but should help shape what intelligence becomes.

Most AI tools today assume users are literate, English speaking and digitally fluent, criteria that exclude the majority of people on the planet. This, Orji argues, makes such tools technically brilliant but developmentally useless for those who need them most. The real question, she said, is not whether the Global South is ready for the AI future, but whether the Global AI future is ready to learn from the Global South.

Source: UN News, 20 June 2026