[Linkpost] “We don’t know why Malawi is poor — and what that means for AI-and-growth forecasts” by Deena Mousa

This is a link post. I had a conversation with someone who claimed offhandedly that AI will dramatically raise agricultural productivity (via agritech advancements) in low-income countries and trigger growth as a result. My instinct was to respond that we've already had substantial advancements in agricultural technology, and yet it hasn't resulted in the magnitude of yield growth, let alone economic growth, you'd expect in many countries. We'd need to explain that before knowing how AI-driven innovation will be different. I work through this question via Malawi. It's a useful case because all the usual scapegoats don't apply (no war, no resource curse, peaceful democracy), but the economy is still dominated by subsistence farming. The argument is that the binding constraint on growth in cases like Malawi is not technological, and that AI-driven productivity gains may hit the same arrangement that absorbed the previous ones unless the forecast specifies how that changes. Curious what people working on AI-and-growth scenarios or on Malawi specifically make of this. --- First published: May 12th, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/g6NPsynWFaQb4mAEJ/we-don-t-know-why-malawi-is-poor-and-what-that-means-for-ai Linkpost URL:https://open.substack.com/pub/deenamousa/p/we-dont-know-why-malawi-is-poor --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.