Middlemen often exploit price information gaps, paying farmers far below market rates for crops. Simple SMS or app-based price-transparency platforms have already shown strong impact where deployed.
Repository of problems worth solving
World Solve is a public institutional repository for identifying real unresolved problems across science, society, health, governance, economics, and local systems. Each entry is intended to be citable, inspectable, and actionable.
Illegal fishing and overfishing are depleting stocks in Southeast Asian waters.
Weak enforcement in contested and remote maritime zones allows unsustainable and unlicensed fishing to continue. Satellite-based vessel tracking and community-managed marine reserves could help restore stocks.
Higher education systems in parts of Asia struggle with quality assurance and research output.
Rapid expansion of universities has sometimes outpaced faculty quality and research infrastructure investment. Stronger accreditation systems and research-funding reform could improve academic standards.
Rapid fintech growth has outpaced consumer education and fraud-detection infrastructure in several markets. AI-based real-time fraud detection tailored to regional transaction patterns is an urgent need.
Cities like Manila, Jakarta, and Mumbai rank among the world's most congested, costing billions in lost time and fuel. Integrated mass-transit expansion and smart traffic-management systems are urgently needed.
Extreme heatwaves are becoming more frequent and deadly across South and Southeast Asia.
Rising temperatures combined with high humidity are pushing some regions toward conditions where outdoor work becomes dangerous. Heat-early-warning systems and outdoor worker protection policies need urgent development.
Cybercrime originating from parts of Southeast Asia has grown into a major regional and global problem.
Weak enforcement capacity has allowed scam operations, sometimes linked to trafficking, to flourish in the region. Coordinated regional cybercrime task forces and stronger digital forensics capacity are urgently needed.
Urban planners frequently work with old census data, making it hard to allocate resources effectively for fast-changing cities. Satellite-based urban growth monitoring could provide near-real-time planning data.
Traditional and alternative medicine practices in Asia lack standardized quality and safety regulation.
Popular herbal and traditional remedies vary widely in potency and purity, sometimes causing harm when unregulated. Quality-testing labs and certification systems for traditional medicine producers could improve safety.
Rural credit cooperatives in parts of Asia suffer from weak governance and mismanagement.
Poorly regulated microfinance and cooperative institutions sometimes collapse, wiping out members' savings. Digital transparency tools and stronger regulatory oversight could protect depositors.
Urban air quality monitoring networks remain sparse outside major Asian capital cities.
Secondary cities often have no real-time air-quality data, leaving residents unaware of health risks on high-pollution days. Low-cost sensor networks could extend monitoring coverage affordably.
Fisheries in African waters are being depleted by illegal foreign trawling.
Weak coastal surveillance lets unlicensed vessels strip fish stocks that local communities depend on. Low-cost satellite and drone monitoring systems could help enforce maritime boundaries.
Port congestion and inefficiency raise the cost of African trade significantly.
Slow customs processing and outdated equipment at major ports add days of delay and cost to imports and exports. Digital single-window customs systems could sharply cut clearance times.
Bureaucratic red tape makes starting a formal business in many African countries slow and costly.
Multiple agencies, unclear regulations, and informal fees discourage entrepreneurs from formalizing businesses. One-stop digital business registration portals have cut registration time dramatically where implemented.
Public health and education budgets are frequently underexecuted despite allocated funding.
Weak public financial management means allocated funds for hospitals and schools often go unspent or misdirected. Real-time budget-tracking dashboards accessible to citizens could improve execution rates.
Maritime piracy and smuggling persist in the Gulf of Guinea.
Weak naval capacity among coastal states lets criminal networks disrupt shipping and extract ransoms. Shared regional maritime surveillance systems could improve enforcement capacity.
Breakthrough approaches to solutions for safe long-term storage and monitoring of captured carbon dioxide.
The absence of robust, context-adapted solutions for solutions for safe long-term storage and monitoring of captured carbon dioxide creates cascading risks across interconnected human and natural systems. Key missing elements include durable performance, low lifetime cost, and governance arrangements capable of sustaining impact beyond pilot stages.
Orbital space debris poses an exponential cascade risk to low Earth orbit operations.
Millions of untracked fragments threaten operational satellites and crewed stations via the Kessler Syndrome. Scalable active debris removal mechanisms and real-time sub-centimeter tracking are required to maintain orbital usability.
The exact cause of the accelerating expansion of the universe—dark energy—is unknown.
Dark energy accounts for roughly 68% of the universe, yet its equation of state and microscopic nature remain complete mysteries. Precise mapping of cosmic expansion over time is crucial for predicting the ultimate fate of space-time.
Chemical rockets are too slow for efficient human and payload transport across the Solar System.
Transit times to Mars and the outer planets require months to years of flight, increasing risk and cost. Breakthrough high-thrust, high-Isp propulsion systems—such as nuclear thermal or plasma engines—are critical.