Kemal Derviş at Brookings: “The emergence of a new digital economy is changing the ways in which businesses and development organizations engage in emerging and developing countries. Transaction costs have been radically driven down, enabling greater inclusion. And technology is driving efficiency improvements, and permitting rapid scaling-up and transformational change.
Three trends in particular have the potential to redefine how global development occurs and how efforts will support it over the next 10 years: (1) the growing adoption of digital payments serving people everywhere with near-frictionless transactions; (2) the spread of Internet connectivity and digital literacy; and (3) the harnessing of data to better serve the poor and to generate new knowledge….. Brookings commissioned six essays …present some of the most current information and thinking on what might be termed “digital disruption,” we are making them publicly available to stimulate wider discussion. The six essays and their authors are:
- Will the digital revolution deliver for the world’s poor, Irving Wladawsky-Berger, Vice President Emeritus, IBM; Visiting Lecturer, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Ending poverty with electronic payments, Michael Faye, Co-Founder and CEO, Segovia Technology; Paul Niehaus, President, GiveDirectly
- Networking the world for global opportunity, Alec Ross, Senior Fellow, School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University
- Will the spread of digital technologies spell the end of the knowledge divide, Deepak Mishra, Lead Economist, World Bank; Co-director, 2016 World Development Report on Internet and Development
- The future of work in the developing world, Marco Annunziata, Chief Economist, General Electric
- Foreign assistance in the digital age, Ann Mei Chang, Executive Director, U.S. Global Development Lab, U.S. Agency for International Development…(More)”