We live in a Digital Age that gives us instant access to information at greater and greater volumes. The rapid growth of digital content and tools is already changing how we create, consume and distribute knowledge. Even though globally participation in the Digital Age remains uneven, more and more people are accessing and contributing digital content every day. Over the next 15 years, developing countries are likely to experience sweeping changes in how states and societies engage with knowledge. These changes hold the potential to improve people’s lives by making information more available, increasing avenues for political and economic engagement, and making government more transparent and responsive. But they also carry dangers of a growing knowledge divide influenced by technology access, threats to privacy, and the potential loss of diversity of knowledge.
This research sets out with a 15-year horizon to look at the possible ways in which digital technologies might contribute to or damage development agendas, and how development practitioners and policymakers might best respond. We draw on secondary materials, but the bulk of this report draws on discussions, insights and opinions of a range of experts, which we gathered through a set of Foresight tools and processes. This included two workshops – one in London and one in Centurion, South Africa – and interviews. Workshop participants and interviewees were selected due to their familiarity with issues around different areas of digital technology, representing non-governmental organisations (NGOs), bilateral and multilateral development agencies, government bodies, universities, libraries, knowledge intermediaries, and businesses. The recommendations we arrived at were largely a result of analysis of the contributions from the workshops and interviews, though grounded in the secondary research.
Policy recommendations suggest general strategies that a range of actors can act on according to their mandates and strengths:
- International development organisations, including bilateral aid agencies and multilaterals can prioritise these recommendations in their development agendas, including drafting and implementing the SDGs. They should lead on coordination and Digital Age advocacy efforts
- Government bodies at local, national and regional levels can help to integrate digital technologies and infrastructure into their development agendas in ways that fit with local priorities and context. Governments should put a greater focus on the role of knowledge in the kind of society they are trying to create, including education curricula and policies for innovation
- Civil society can help spread a stronger understanding of, and advocate for, policies for openness and privacy, and for knowledge and infrastructure that meet the needs of people who are poor and marginalised
- Researchers and research organisations can also take forward the agenda of openness, changing incentive structures. Universities and research organisations, especially in developing countries, can encourage federated systems for vetting the quality of local research and making it more widely available
- Libraries and knowledge intermediaries should lead and inform advocacy efforts for openness, and collaborate in developing coordinated systems, platforms and approaches to more effective, inclusive and open knowledge sharing and discoverability