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Innovations

The World Bank’s latest tool for fighting famine: Artificial intelligence

The group is partnering with Silicon Valley to tackle a problem affecting millions around the world.

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September 23, 2018 at 4:19 p.m. EDT
A severely malnourished infant is bathed in a bucket Aug. 25 in Yemen's Hajjah province. About 2.9 million women and children are acutely malnourished in that country. (Hammadi Issa/AP)

Despite being a slow-moving disaster, famine is notoriously difficult to predict.

The reason for this, experts say, is that severe food shortages are hardly ever about food supply alone.

A famine might be triggered by drought or some other climatic interference in crop production, but other powerful forces usually bring the scourge to full bloom: food price inflation, political instability, military conflict and even too much rain.