The annual Global Digital Development Forum (GDDF) run by USAID took place from 12-13 June, bringing together development and international aid sector stakeholders to discuss the future of digital tools and strategies within international development. The GDDF is an annual event organized by USAID’s Digital Development team and the virtual events company TechChange. First held in 2020 as one of several pandemic-era fully-virtual conferences, the event aims to promote innovative solutions and partnerships among digital development professionals, government ministries around the world, civil society and the private sector to advance global development goals through digital means. Given USAID’s expanding role in dispensing aid, the GDDF brings together stakeholders in the global development aid architecture, especially those from the Global South with an interest in promoting digital connectivity.
Since its inception, GDDF has evolved to address the latest trends, technologies, and challenges in bridging the global digital divide. As is common with USAID events, this one included robust participation from the private sector, from private international development consulting firms (like DAI, Deloitte, Chemonics, and the Palladium Group, among others), to corporations such as IBM, in addition to officials from UN institutions and government agencies at all levels. GDDF’s uniqueness has been that it has continued to be convened virtually even after COVID. However, this year was the effort to move many events and panels to an in-person format, especially for Wahington, DC-based sessions on the second day.
There were several noteworthy takeaways for the many Global South stakeholders in attendance. An early session in the agenda, titled How Climate Change Impacts Digital Ecosystems, noted the necessity of accounting for climate change and adverse climate impacts on digital ecosystems, especially for developing economies. Digital ecosystems are the combination of all the components that work together to enable all digital interactions and transactions and are comprised of technology infrastructure (hardware, cables, etc.), software, the services provided online, individual users, laws and regulations that govern digital spaces, etc. Usually, the conversations around ecosystems and their environmental impact focus on how digital technology worsens climate change because new technologies can be energy-intensive or generate large amounts of e-waste. The focus instead was on how digital infrastructure must be more resilient to inevitable climate impacts.
Assuming that negative climate-related impacts are inevitable, what types of redundancies need to be in place to minimize disruption to everyday life? Low-income countries may lack ‘redundant’ infrastructure, such as multiple or alternate underwater cable systems, to improve resilience to shocks and avoid disruption in service.[1] Without this, there could be a serious impact during a large-scale natural disaster, which might lead communities starting to adapt new technologies to discount further use in the future, thus further delaying the adoption of everyday digital tools. Without such redundant infrastructure, disasters can quickly knock out services essential to daily activities[2], such as supply chain disruptions that resulted from flooding in and around Chennai which forced closure of manufacturing plants.[3]
Basic recommendations from the panel included 1) incorporating risk assessment for likely local natural hazards and climate impacts in the plans for new cable routes (including underwater routes); 2) building redundancies in digital infrastructure, including parallel systems, in climate vulnerable areas; and 3) using AI models and simulations to help design resilient infrastructure.
Another key takeaway, mentioned in many different sessions, was the need and benefit of adapting AI tools for local contexts. For example, a panel on Virtual/alternate reality (VR/AR) Technology’s Role in Shaping Future Global Development noted that VR/AR has demonstrated itself to be a better methodology for knowledge retention in virtual training, especially among communities with low literacy rates. One Indian panellist in a session about Navigating the Impact of AI on Human Rights noted that the use of AI for translation services in judicial systems could help improve access to justice in places where language barriers are common, a valuable observation for highly multilingual societies like India. In fintech, PayTM’s sound box was cited as a local context digital innovation, where the audio cue indicating when a payment is received allowed local street vendors to know they had been paid, even if they did not have access to a smartphone or other device that would allow them to check their account balance.[4]
An advocate for digital Universal Acceptance (UA) from the tech giant IBM, pointed out that building digitally accessible infrastructure globally meant expanding the international domain name system (DNS) to more easily accept and translate between email addresses and websites written in non-Romanized writing systems.
Substantial time was allotted to addressing disinformation, especially in a year with a record number of key elections worldwide. Two experts on information ecosystems, Dr Phil Howard from Oxford University and Dr Lisa Schirch from the University of Notre Dame in the U.S., explained that there are ways to design online platforms in a way that promotes democracy and discourages the spread of disinformation. The problem has been that to-date, the public spaces for information exchange have mostly been designed by a narrow set of for-profit interests, which has eroded trust in the digital information environment.
One way to address this lack of trust was to proactively “pre-bunk” disinformation. Even with all the available technology, in larger democracies, it can still take two to five days (or longer, depending on circumstances) to collect and count all the ballots to give a result with confidence.
The conference reiterated that technology should help the public understand the checks and balances in place to protect election processes and results. A recent example was Taiwan’s use of “pre-bunking” prior to its January national election in order to support public understanding of how to identify deep fakes and prevent the spread of false rumours.[5]
Finally, as important as the topics discussed were the topics not discussed at the conference. Artificial intelligence – especially generative AI platforms such as ChatGPT, CoPilot, and Meta AI – was the focus of attention given their exponential application to the workplace in the last year and a half. Missing was a mention of blockchain, a topic that was prominent in prior GDDF years but has fallen out of favour more recently due to problems with scalability, excess energy consumption, complexity, and interoperability.[6]
Also missing from the agenda was quantum computing, exponentially faster processes that can optimize resource allocation, climate modelling, advanced healthcare, sustainable energy management, etc. However, quantum technologies are still nascent, and expected to have their own sector-disrupting impacts once they reach scalability. If the priorities listed in the new U.S.-India initiative on Critical and Emerging Technology (iCET)[7] are any indication of future hot topics, expect quantum computing to feature prominently in future GDDF agendas.
Purvi Patel is International Affairs Fellow, Council on Foreign Relations and Visiting Fellow, Gateway House.
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References
[1] ‘Digital for Climate,’ World Bank Group, https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/digitaldevelopment/brief/digital-for-climate
[2] ‘Climate change’s disruptive impact on global supply chains and the urgent call for resilience,’ The Economist Impact, https://impact.economist.com/projects/trade-in-transition/climate_change
[3] Praveen Paramasivam, ‘Hundreds still stranded, plants closed in India’s flood-hit Chennai,’ Reuters, December 8, 2023, https://www.reuters.com/world/india/hundreds-still-stranded-plants-closed-indias-flood-hit-chennai-2023-12-08/
[4] Comments from a panel titled Tech Tales from Beyond the Western Frontiers.
[5] David Klepper, Huizhong Wu, ‘How Taiwan beat back disinformation and preserved the integrity of its election,’ LA Times, January 27, 2024, https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2024-01-27/how-taiwan-beat-back-disinformation-and-preserved-the-integrity-of-its-election
[6] Bernard Marr, ‘The 5 Biggest Problems With Blockchain Technology Everyone Must Know About,’ Forbes, April 14, 2023, https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2023/04/14/the-5-biggest-problems-with-blockchain-technology-everyone-must-know-about/
[7] ‘JOINT FACT SHEET: The United States and India Continue to Chart an Ambitious Course for the Initiative on Critical and Emerging Technology,’ The White House Briefing Room, June 17, 2024, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2024/06/17/joint-fact-sheet-the-united-states-and-india-continue-to-chart-an-ambitious-course-for-the-initiative-on-critical-and-emerging-technology/