The World Bank's new Digital Development Partnership (DDP) helps operationalize the 2016 World Development Report on Digital Dividends and offers a platform for digital innovation and development financing. The DDP brings public and private sector partners together to catalyze support to developing countries in the articulation and implementation of digital development strategies and plans.
Opportunity
Digital technologies can help in addressing some of the toughest development challenges: providing access to information, overcoming remoteness, exclusion, and disconnects, and offering economic opportunity. World leaders, academics, the private sector, and development specialists agree on the tremendous potential of using digital technologies for development. The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) set the target to “significantly increase access to information and communications technology and strive to provide universal and affordable access to the internet in least developed countries by 2020” (SDG target 9.c). More generally, the ambition of many SDGs such as target 5.c will require innovative, inclusive, technology-based solutions. Numerous initiatives led by civil society and the private sector call for a better use of digital technologies to achieve a breakthrough on some of the most persistent development challenges.
World Development Report 2016
The World Bank’s 2016 World Development Report on Digital Dividends (WDR 2016), published in January 2016, presents a balanced and nuanced analysis of the ‘Digital Dividends’ that developing countries can expect to reap. The report reviews the opportunities that digital technologies offer to developing countries, the risks that exist if the benefits of digital innovation accrue to those already better off, and the necessary complements (such as the country’s skills capacity, business environment, and governance) to ensure that digital development can work as a positive force for sustainable, inclusive development.
Digital Development Partnership
To help implement the SDGs and operationalize the WDR 2016, the World Bank has launched a Digital Development Partnership (DDP). This partnership makes digital solutions available to developing countries with an emphasis on the following areas:
- Data and indicators
- Digital economy enabling environment
- Cybersecurity
- Internet access for all
- Digital government
- Mainstreaming digital services, solutions, and platforms.
