Human Security and digital transformation of governance in development contexts

Across the policy life-cycle and a range of policy areas AI is driving innovation and has come to represent a technological paradigm shift in the public sector through its growing role in public service decision-making and delivery, at a time of increasingly complex and interconnected challenges for human security, public policy and state capacity (Misuraca &amp; van Noordt, 2020). This large-scale and rapid role of foundation models, large language models and generative AI has been accompanied by substantial research considering their potential impacts across societies and highlighting the complex issues for law, policy and practice it presents (Zuiderwijk et al., 2021). This paper seeks to contribute to debates by drawing together the connections between human security, the policy cycle, and AI and governance innovation in the public sector to explore the diverse challenges and opportunities in a development context. <br/>Economic, infrastructure and educational disparities (Aderibigbe et al., 2023) as well as power asymmetries, the digital divide and AI colonialism and technological dependency (Regilme, 2025) have all been highlighted as dynamics that can impact the wider adoption of and governance innovation in AI in diverse developing socio-economic contexts as well as exacerbating human insecurity across its different dimensions. They can serve to reinforce the dominance of wealthier countries in high value settings and push lower income countries further behind. To address these challenges the paper proposed an approach to AI governance for human security integrating innovation, empowerment and protection with transparency, accountability and responsibilisation in decision-making and selection of AI tools across the policy lifecycle. The framework offers a distinct alternative to prevailing ethics-based approaches and suggests the tools and infrastructure to effectively develop, manage and implement an AI eco-system and public governance architecture that are not only innovative, but also empowering and protective in developing contexts.