Digital development
The challenge:
To date, digital technologies have contributed only incremental benefits in economic, social and political development, and a step-change will be required if they are to deliver the transformational ambitions of the Sustainable Development Goals.
Given the growing embedding of the technology in all development sectors and processes, digital technology is moving from being a tool to achieve development outcomes to being the platform through which development processes are mediated.
Digital development can provide new routes out of poverty. But unless digital alternatives are developed, we risk foregoing the development benefits of new technology; entrenching new digitally-enabled systems of inequality; and enabling digital harms that damage rights and promote injustice.
How we are addressing it:
GDI already has the specialist research of the Centre for Development Informatics and teaching of the Human and Digital Development group, plus a growing presence of data science across GDI’s other research areas.
The constancy of technological change creates knowledge gaps and a broad digital development research agenda for GDI at all stages of the innovation cycle:
- Infrastructure: supporting systemic policy and strategic actions that develop inclusive digital ecosystems (human, technical, institutional infrastructure)
- Innovation: supporting new digital technologies that promote achievement of the SDGs
- Implementation: identifying and promoting good practices in design and operationalisation of digital technology
- Impact: tracking the emerging development implications of digital technologies at micro-, meso- and macro levels
Research Projects
Development Implications of Digital Economies (DIODE)
This strategic networks researches the digital economy and its role in developing countries
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The Centre for Development Informatics
The centre examines the role of information and communication technologies in socio-economic development.
FairWork in the Platform Economy in the Global South
This project aims to establish how policy and practice around platform work can help support worker’s rights and deliver decent work standards.
Resilience Assessment Benchmarking and Impact Toolkit (RABIT)
This project involved the creation of RABIT and then its field-testing in two locations.
Our teaching agenda:
- Management and Information Systems: Change and Development MSc
- Management and Information Systems: Change and Development MSc (Distance Learning)
- ICTs for Development MSc
- Research Methods with International Development MSc
- Development Policy and Management PhD
People and publications:
Click on the names below to read their latest publications or read the latest publications from the Global Development Institute and from the Development Informatics working paper series.
- Dr Shamel Azmeh - Lecturer in Technology, Labour and Production
- Dr Richard Duncombe - Lecturer, Information Systems and Development
- Dr Ping Gao - Lecturer, Information Systems
- Dr Christopher Foster – Presidential Fellow, Industry 4.0
- Prof Richard Heeks - Professor, Development Informatics
- Dr Negar Monazam Tabrizi - Lecturer in Information Systems and Digital Development
- Dr Jaco Renken - Lecturer, Information and Communication Technology for Development
- Dr Gindo Tampubolon - Lecturer, Poverty, Inequality and Growth
News and insights:
PhD Researchers and Post-Doctoral Fellows
- Angelica Fernandez Garzon - Overcoming Barriers in the Implementation of Colombian Inclusive Business
- Pfavai Nyajeka - Using Mobiles in Low-Income Countries For Development: Women-Led Enterprises in Zimbabwe
- Jiaying Li - The Impact of Financial Sector Development on Total Factor Productivity in Developing Countries
- Ryo Seo-Zindy - Understanding Under-the-radar Innovation Communities in Developing Countries: A Case Study of Maker Movement in South East Asia
- Hao Peng- The Impact of E-learning on Chinese Elementary Students
- Luis Rivera Illingworth - Using microdata and big data to measure the digital divide
- Bookie Ezeomah - Digital platforms disrupting agricultural value chains in Nigeria
- Kaiyu Xu - The Ecosystem of Crowdfunding in China: An Illustrative Case Study of The Fund Operating Platform Of Ant Financial
- Xinlun Jiang - Analyzing national policy for China's Fin-tech development
- Basma Albanna - Leveraging Positive Deviance through the Use of Big Data
- Qingna Zhou - The Research on the Application of E-commerce in Rural Enterprises: The Case of the Emerging Township and Village Enterprise (TVEs) in China