The articles listed here cover topics related to digital responses to the COVID-19 pandemic and impact on digital development — with a focus on developing countries and emerging markets.
COVID-19 and the related lockdown measures to prevent the virus’ spread have highlighted how important it is for everyone to have access to reliable and resilient digital infrastructure. Restrictions on movement have generated higher Internet usage and increased traffic on networks, reflecting an increase in remote working and learning, as well as other activities that have shifted online. This article provides insight into the effect of COVID-19-related lockdown measures on internet speed in a sample of developing countries in Africa. The findings of this study demonstrate the resiliency of digital infrastructure in Africa and also highlight and reflect the benefits of partnership between public and private stakeholders to manage traffic surges. The development community should encourage and leverage these partnerships to not only ensure continued network resilience during times of crisis, but also to minimize the digital divide between countries and within countries as the new global digital transformation takes shape.
Harnessing Artificial Intelligence for Development in the Post-COVID-19 Era
Artificial intelligence (AI) has rapidly emerged as an important topic for the global development agenda, and the Covid-19 pandemic is also yielding new and innovative AI applications and solutions. However, the development of AI technologies remains heavily concentrated in a small number of advanced economies which have access to a strong local talent pool, a robust research and development base and access to capital to fuel growth through investment. Many countries that have seen broad development and adoption also have a national strategic direction for AI defined by their governments. This working paper explores some of these approaches to AI across 11 countries at different stages of digital maturity and economic development, mapping initiatives to different policy domain areas and identifying the tools and instruments that have been proposed to implement AI strategies.
How COVID-19 Has Exposed Cyber Risks in the Health Sector
For developing countries the COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the need to prioritize building cybersecurity capacity within the health sector, and represents a rare opportunity to establish cybersecurity more broadly as a core element of the 21st Century’s development agenda. This article presents the latest cyber risks for the health sector that have emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic, and new approaches needed for building cybersecurity resilience. Following a brief explanation of the most common threat categories observed during the pandemic, the top five targets for cyberattacks are highlighted which include hospitals and healthcare centers, public health organizations, vaccine companies and virus research institutions, individuals, and contact tracing apps. In addition to operational solutions, the article presents three emerging themes that have manifested during the COVID-19, and implications for future operational solutions and coordination on building cybersecurity resilience.