Overview
The world is becoming digital at an ever-accelerating pace. Economic and social opportunities are increasingly dependent on widespread connectivity and availability of high-value services. However, this progress is not being shared equally. Many developing countries are falling behind, creating a digital divide that is disadvantaging their ability to fully benefit from global digital progress and participation in the global economy.
In some countries, these challenges require hard infrastructure investment including availability and ability to access broadband internet. In others, lacking adequate digital public infrastructure (DPI), including access to unique digital identification, government to person transfer systems, and data sharing systems impede government¡¯s ability to efficiently provision badly needed services. And in many others, rapidly evolving digital services hold enormous promise for improving the provision of needed services in a wide range of sectors including social protection, financial services, agriculture, health, and education, but are still in initial stages of development and expansion.
Digital development is driving enormous changes and opportunities across all sectors of society, and whose opportunities and implications we are only beginning to understand. Yet alongside this potential, this rapidly evolving environment holds risks and unknown challenges as well. The recent emergence of generative artificial intelligence provides just one clear example of?how?the ubiquity of digital connectivity and services can simultaneously present both. The speed of these developments creates urgency around an ambitious learning agenda that can provide evidence in this fast-moving space. ?
Themes
In response to these evidence gaps and research needs, Development Impact¡¯s digital agenda covers three thematic pillars:
Digital public infrastructure, including digital identification, payment systems, and trust services;
Digital human capital, including skills, digital literacy, and consumer protection;
Digital services, including beneficiary centered service provision (including agricultural extension, health, and education) and governance.
Cutting across these priority areas is an emphasis on understanding inclusivity of these new approaches, considering potential digital risks, and emphasizing impacts with respect to individuals¡¯ livelihoods and job creation.
Beyond impact evaluation and research, Development Impact has also launched a new initiative called Impact AI to organize and expand our growing agenda on the responsible use of AI technology in development, built on two pillars: (1) developing AI tools to improve accessibility of impact evaluation research findings for the development community, including our CausalAI product; and (2) designing better interventions by improving the measurement of development outcomes using AI, including public goods to monitor food security globally and online hate content in Nigeria using large language models.
Partnerships
To pursue these aims, Development Impact is partnering with the Digital Transformation (DT) Vice Presidency. The DT-Development Impact collaboration uses a trial-and-adopt approach to measure the impact of their interventions on gender equity, inclusion, digital literacy, trust online, access to government digital services, and socioeconomic well-being. The co-production model also addresses slow implementation by transferring capacity and know-how to local partners, creating a sustainable framework to optimize development impact.
In particular, Development Impact is working closely with DT¡¯s Identification for Development (ID4D) and G2Px groups in a cross-divisional ¡°DPI-lab¡±, with a growing portfolio of projects ranging from foundational research and analytical products to ambitious impact evaluations. The team has been involved in managing and conducting portfolios of DPI centered research in India, Ethiopia, and the Philippines. Additionally, Development Impact is developing a project and future collaboration with AFE¡¯s Digital MPA around digital skills training and job creation. As the Digital Development GP expands and becomes a vice-presidency in the coming year, the Development Impact Group¡¯s work and engagement in digital development will become an increasingly important pillar of the Development Impact Group¡¯s work.
