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Can AI help beat poverty? Researchers test ways to aid the poorest people

Measuring poverty is the first step to delivering support, but it has long been a costly, time-intensive and contentious endeavour.
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  1. Carrie Arnold

    1. Carrie Arnold is a freelance writer in Richmond, Virginia.

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Composite illustration showing photos of rural areas in Africa with parts pixelated, a poor man walking in the foreground and symbolic data behind.

Illustration: Barbara Gibson

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Beginning in late 2020, with the COVID-19 pandemic in full swing, the mobile phones of tens of thousands of impoverished villagers in Togo pinged with good news. Their money was ready. With the help of artificial intelligence (AI), these villagers in the narrow strip of land in West Africa had been approved to receive around US$10 every two weeks, delivered directly to their mobile money accounts. Although that might not sound like much, it could keep people from going hungry.

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Nature 638, 878-880 (2025)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-025-00565-7

References

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