How countries can benefit from technology transformation

This year’s World Development Report (WDR) titled, Digital Dividends, sums up the human development curve rather aptly on the influence technology now has on our lives: We reside in a physical world, but live an increasingly digital life. And, as the concept note to the 2016 WDR points out, “trips to the library, music store, bank teller, travel agent, and even government offices are gradually becoming a distant memory, replaced by their digital incarnations. People are finding love and countries are waging (cyber) war on the internet.” The report, which offers survey results of the latest research, data, and literature on the digital economy, poses; How is the internet reshaping the contours of economic development? The WDR, a themed annual World Bank flagship report, seeks to take stock on the state of world development, with year’s focus being on the internet, mobile communication, and the World Wide Web. These three technologies, the 2016 report notes, are now fully integrated: Smartphones use cellular networks for standard mobile voice communication, but can also access data services over the internet or route calls using voice over internet protocol. It reminds us how the Arab Spring demonstrated the power of the internet for social mobilisation; that “activities that did not even have a name till a few years ago, now overwhelm our lives”: 6,000 tweets each second, 100 hours of video uploaded on YouTube each minute, 240 million Google searches each hour, 106 billion emails sent each day. But, while the digital revolution has changed the daily lives of billions of people, billions more have yet to go fully online. This observation is the crux of the “Digital Dividends” analysis. Before 4000 BC, as Kaushik Basu, Senior Vice-President and Chief Economist of the World Bank puts it in perspective in a blog, not being able to read and write was not a handicap, since no one was literate. Literacy became a new necessity starting some 5,000 years ago. Likewise, digital connectivity is the new necessity of our times. If societies cannot provide this, inequality will rise; and so will poverty. With reference to the poor and marginalised peoples of the world, he writes, the 2016 WDR celebrates the digital developments but reminds us that a whole lot remains to be done. A key message of the 2016 WDR, as one analyst observes, is that “analog,” or non-digital, factors such as policies and regulations are needed to ensure the digital market is competitive and the internet expands access to information, lowers the cost of information, and promotes more inclusive, efficient, and innovative societies. (Also see “Why we should make Internet a public utility” and “We deserve affordable Internet”). Women and persons with disabilities remain some of the most marginalized. But, as the WDR observes, new technologies allow women to participate more easily in the labor market – as e-commerce entrepreneurs, in online work, or in business-process outsourcing. The world’s 1 billion persons with disabilities – 80 percent of whom live in developing countries – can lead more productive lives with the help of text, voice, and video communication. While the internet uptake is steadily gaining ground with the spread of smartphones, we in the region can attest to the impact mobile communication has had in our communities. Sample Rwanda’s RapidSMS programme under the Ministry of Health that, since 2009, has been used to monitor and relay SMS messages on maternal, newborn and child survival through the vast community health workers system with tremendous achievement that made the country a major success story under the Millennium Development Goals. In any case, a healthy community lays its own foundation to economic development. And – under the M-Pesa phenomenon – the economic impact has been exceptional with the now ubiquitous mobile money transactions nationally, and in the region through different mobile phone platforms across borders in the East African Community. All told, however, as the 2016 WDR concludes, “the full beneﬁts of the information and communications transformation will not be realized unless countries continue to improve their business climate, invest in people’s education and health, and promote good governance.”

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How countries can benefit from technology transformation