As recent trends in global supply chains continue to demonstrate rapid changes, especially from pandemic to climate-based disruptions, the future will depend on systems that are efficient, adaptive, resilient, and, most importantly, digitised.

Supply chain systems will increasingly leverage emerging technologies, including AI, machine learning, and blockchain, to optimise visibility, prediction, and strategy formulation.

According to scholars like Peace Aludogbu, businesses and the government’s ability to swiftly respond to emerging supply chain challenges rests on these changes.

A Ph.D candidate and instructor of Operations and Production Management at New Mexico State University (NMSU),
Aludogbu is at the forefront of the balance between the theoretical and the practical within the fields of supply chain resilience, technology assimilation, and the transformation of emerging
economies.

Supply Chain Forecasting and AI

In this day and age, talking about supply chain and AI is a big thing in both industry and academia. Most supply chain systems are predictive and can make decisions based on making predictions from large data sets. The decisions predicted are optimal and human intuition is left out. Aludogbu’s work locates itself at the intersection of tech and real-world resilience. Her research is determining how advancements in data-driven systems can foster the resilience of metastable systems, particularly in the agri-food systems that are the backbone of most developing countries.

This complex system feeds millions and leaves a gap of vulnerability for both the producers and the consumers.
“All blockchains and artificial intelligence should support and enhance human decision-making mechanisms, not supplant them.”

Aludogbu asserts. She believes that in the right hands, these technologies facilitate prediction for planners to assess and sidestep risks like weather disruption or logistics bottlenecks.

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In the same vein, she was directly involved in supporting Native American farmers and ranchers through the Native American Farmers and Ranchers Program (NAF), which was administered by the NMSU Arrowhead Centers’ AIBE in collaboration with the Centre for Supply Chain and Entrepreneurship (CSCE).

Through this program, funded by a $100,000 grant, she contributed to the business design, supply chain strategies, and delivery of hands-on workshops focused on value-added food production, inventory management, smart framing, packaging, and food regulatory compliance. Aludogbu’s role involved working with participating entrepreneurs to identify and determine value-added products through the target market, utilising a food slogan and freeze-drying, as well as understanding food manufacturing requirements and developing practical solutions to improve market access and long-term resilience. These efforts helped Native American farmers navigate local and regional food systems more effectively and cost-effectively.

Aludogbu is making a difference in the world beyond case competitions and published works.

She was selected as a session chair for Reviews on the Scope and Trends in Supply Chain Transformation at the 2025 Decision Sciences Institute annual conference, one of the world’s leading conferences in Operations Research and Analytics, demonstrating her expertise and leadership in the field. Her position as session chair places her at the center of discourse on the strategic use of digital technology and human-centered design.

Instead of seeing technology as a magical fix for broken systems, Peace Aludogbu asks a more fundamental question. Who is technology’s digital innovation really designed for? For her research, Aludogbu conducted a review of academic papers versus the intersection of human-centered design, digitization, and global agri-food supply chains.

With the most sophisticated bibliometric and thematic analytical techniques, Aludogbu’s research articulates and maps the shifting discourse on artificial intelligence, sustainability, and food systems, to identify where innovation is happening.

She draws from these studies to illustrate how AI, data, and blockchain are pivotal to addressing food insecurity and the challenges of climate change. Aludogbu describes the need for a paradigmatic shift from these ‘tech-first’ solutions to socially-regenerative systems, where digital technology enhances, not replaces, human decision-making and collective intelligence.

“It’s one thing to write about resilience, and it’s another to shape the conversation,” she says.

Ifeoma Okeke-Korieocha is the Aviation Correspondent at BusinessDay Media Limited, publishers of BusinessDay Newspapers. She is also the Deputy Editor, BusinessDay Weekender Magazine, the Saturday Weekend edition of BusinessDay. She holds a BSC in Mass Communication from the prestigious University of Nigeria, Nsukka and a Masters degree in Marketing at the University of Lagos. As the lead writer on the aviation desk, Ifeoma is responsible and in charge of the three weekly aviation and travel pages in BusinessDay and BDSunday. She also overseas and edits all pages of BusinessDay Saturday Weekender. She has written various investigative, features and news stories in aviation and business related issues and has been severally nominated for award in the category of Aviation Writer of the Year by the Nigeria Media Nite-Out awards; one of the Nigeria’s most prestigious media awards ceremonies. Ifeoma is a one-time winner of the prestigious Nigeria Media Merit Award under the 'Aviation Writer of the Year' Category. She is the 2025 Eloy Award winner under the Print Media Journalist category. She has undergone several journalism trainings by various prestigious organisations. Ifeoma is also a fellow of the Female Reporters Leadership Fellowship of the Wole Soyinka Centre for Investigative Journalism.

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