Science Technology and Innovation (STI) Partnerships as Development Multipliers (Impact on UN SDG’s)

[Primary SDGs: 17 – Partnerships for the Goals; with cross-SDG impacts on 1 – No Poverty; 3 – Good Health and Well-Being; 4 – Quality Education; 6 – Clean Water and Sanitation; 7 – Affordable and Clean Energy; 8 – Decent Work and Economic Growth; 9 – Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure; 10 – Reduced Inequalities]

Development Changes When Systems Reach People

For much of the world, development does not stall because useful technology is absent. It stalls because the systems connecting people to money, healthcare, education, markets, and government remain too expensive, distant, or unreliable to work consistently. A household may qualify for assistance but lose a day reaching an office; a farmer may have something valuable to sell but lack timely payment or market information. The economic constraint is often not the service itself, but the cost of reaching it.

By reducing the penalty imposed by distance and institutional scarcity, internet technologies can change that calculation. Mobile connectivity can bring a household into financial and public systems without a nearby branch. Cloud computing can give an institution capacity without reproducing the fixed cost of building it locally. Connected infrastructure can expose failures earlier. What changes is not simply access to technology, but the economics of participation.

Nearly three quarters of the world’s population was online in 2025, yet 2.2 billion people remained offline, most in low- and middle-income economies. Even where networks exist, affordability, quality, and skills still determine how much economic value people can derive from them. The harder development problem is increasingly absorption: whether connectivity becomes dependable and useful enough to support ordinary economic and public life.

That shift gives science, technology and innovation partnerships their importance. Governments must be able to procure and maintain digital systems, while firms need the capacity to incorporate them into production. Institutions must then connect technology to services people can actually use. SDG 17, Partnerships for the Goals, provides the framework through cooperation, technology access, financing, capacity building, and multi-stakeholder partnerships. Its economic function is not simply to move technology across borders, but to create the conditions under which technology becomes productive capacity.

Sources: International Telecommunication Union

Access Becomes Valuable When It Changes Human Outcomes

As connectivity moves deeper into finance, healthcare, education, commerce, and public administration, its development value depends less on the connection itself than on what the connection changes. In high-capacity economies, digital participation often appears as convenience or productivity. In lower-capacity settings, it can become the first practical route into a service that formally existed but remained difficult to reach.

Kenya’s M-PESA shows the before-and-after economics. Before widespread mobile money, transferring funds across distance could depend on physical movement or conventional financial infrastructure. Mobile money reduced that friction. Long-run research estimated that access to M-PESA increased per-capita consumption and lifted about 194,000 Kenyan households, roughly 2 percent of households at the time, out of poverty. The gains were stronger for female-headed households and were associated with greater financial resilience and movement from agriculture into business.

Lower transfer costs made it easier for households to share risk and respond to income shocks. Better liquidity reduced pressure to cut consumption when income fell and widened the range of saving and work decisions available to households. A communications technology changed financial intermediation, and that change reached welfare. The pathway connects directly to SDG 1, No Poverty, while stronger market participation supports SDG 8, Decent Work and Economic Growth.

Healthcare shows the same transition in a simpler form. An appointment can exist on a clinic’s schedule while the patient never receives care. Electronic reminders reduce part of that coordination failure. A systematic review covering more than 16,000 patients found that people receiving text notifications were 23 percent more likely to attend scheduled appointments than those receiving none, with attendance rates of 67 percent versus 54 percent. The technology did not create clinicians or facilities; it improved use of capacity already in place.

For SDG 3, Good Health and Well-Being, the gain comes from increasing the probability that care reaches the patient at the right time. Education follows the same logic. Connectivity has limited value when students lack reliable devices or teachers cannot use digital resources effectively. When networks extend instructional reach or maintain continuity, the effective supply of education changes. That is the relevant pathway to SDG 4, Quality Education.

Sources: World Bank Global Findex Database

The Multiplier Appears When One Improvement Changes Another

The largest gains from internet technologies rarely stay inside the industry that created them. They spread when one digital capability changes the cost structure or information environment of another activity.

In logistics, poor visibility turns uncertainty into an operating cost. Businesses compensate with extra inventory and tied-up working capital, while delays raise losses. Better information changes that calculation because documentation and operating signals begin moving with the transaction rather than arriving after the problem.

Kenya’s TradeNet system connects 42 stakeholders and more than 10,000 registered users through an electronic cargo-documentation environment integrated with government agencies and payment systems. KenTrade reports that the system has reduced the average number of application processes by almost half and document requirements by roughly 30 to 50 percent. The immediate benefit is administrative efficiency, but better verification can also reduce inventory uncertainty and release working capital. Those spillovers link SDG 9, Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure, with the productivity and market-access objectives of SDG 8.

Physical infrastructure creates similar multipliers. A water sensor has little value if it only records a reading; its usefulness rises when information reaches a maintenance organization early enough to change a decision. Earlier detection can reduce losses and protect service continuity, creating a pathway to SDG 6, Clean Water and Sanitation. Electricity sits deeper still because digital services depend on reliable power. Progress toward SDG 7, Affordable and Clean Energy, can therefore raise the return on investments serving several other goals.

Integration turns separate efficiency gains into development multipliers.

Sources: Kenya Trade Network Agency

Technology Transfer Matters When Countries Can Absorb It

When technology arrives faster than institutions can operate or adapt it, the multiplier weakens. Developing economies cannot efficiently reproduce every advanced digital technology domestically, so external technology transfer remains important. Yet imported technology becomes development capacity only when local organizations can sustain what arrives.

The same deployment can leave two very different legacies. One leaves newer equipment or software but continuing dependence on external expertise. The other leaves operating knowledge behind as engineers learn to maintain the technology, public agencies become more capable buyers, and domestic firms gain experience supplying complementary services.

Over time, that difference compounds. An economy that learns to operate one generation of infrastructure does not begin the next technology cycle from zero. Skills move between employers, procurement improves, local firms become more credible partners, and investors face lower execution risk. STI partnership therefore creates value not only through the capability introduced, but through the capability formed while introducing it.

Investment patterns show why absorption cannot be treated as secondary. Foreign investment in the digital economy has averaged about $122 billion annually in recent years, yet around 80 percent of greenfield digital projects in the Global South have gone to just ten economies. Developing countries received $531 billion in digital-economy greenfield projects over five years while core digital infrastructure remained substantially underfunded. Economies with stronger absorptive capacity can attract the next round of capital more easily, reinforcing the disparities addressed by SDG 10, Reduced Inequalities.

That second-order effect also explains why leapfrogging succeeds in some environments and stalls in others.

Sources: UN Trade and Development

Leapfrogging Changes the Development Path

Development does not have to follow the same technological sequence everywhere. Mobile finance can reach households before dense branch banking exists, while cloud computing can provide scalable capacity without requiring each institution to build its own computing environment. Digital health can maintain contact where clinicians are scarce. These systems can bypass portions of older capital structures while still delivering functions those structures were built to provide.

Where capital is scarce, that substitution matters. Legacy infrastructure often demands large fixed investment before the first user receives value. Internet-based systems can spread some costs across many users or shift them toward shared infrastructure. A small business purchasing cloud capacity preserves capital for other uses, while common digital functions can reduce repeated investment across government agencies.

The deeper gain appears when one capability raises the return on another. Connectivity can give a farmer market information; digital identity can establish credentials; payments can make remote transactions possible. Once transaction records exist, financing becomes easier to assess. Each additional capability increases the economic usefulness of those already present.

Leapfrogging still has a boundary. Countries can avoid portions of obsolete infrastructure, but not the foundations modern systems require. Cloud computing still needs reliable connectivity and competent governance. Mobile finance depends on trust and adequate coverage. Advanced digital systems still depend on electricity, cybersecurity, and institutions capable of acting on their output.

The strongest gains appear when leapfrogging and absorption occur together, with technology removing a legacy constraint while partnership builds the capabilities that cannot be skipped.

Sources: International Telecommunication Union

What Remains After the Partnership Matters Most

Because the SDGs depend on overlapping systems, progress in one area can change the economics of another. Poverty is shaped partly by access to money and markets, while healthcare and education increasingly depend on reliable infrastructure and affordable connectivity. Productive digital systems, in turn, depend on energy and institutional competence.

That interdependence creates the multiplier. Connectivity can make payments possible, while payments generate information that can improve access to finance. Investment can strengthen firms and household incomes, making health and education easier to sustain. Capability built during one intervention lowers the cost of the next.

The opposite can compound as well. Weak connectivity can make a nominally digital service unusable, while poor identity design can turn one verification failure into exclusion across several services. Technology does not automatically correct the institutions around it. In many cases, it amplifies both their capabilities and their weaknesses.

The meaningful measure of technology transfer is therefore not how much equipment, software, or outside capital arrives. It is what remains after the partnership matures: functioning services, skilled people, stronger institutions, competitive firms, interoperable systems, and greater capacity to solve the next development constraint.

Leapfrogging can shorten the technological path. SDG 17 provides a mechanism for strengthening the institutions traveling it. Durable development begins when each improvement raises the economic and human value of the capabilities around it.

Sources: United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Institute of Internet Economics

Key Takeaways

• Internet technologies influence SDG outcomes when they reduce the economic and institutional cost of reaching essential systems.
• The development challenge is shifting from basic connectivity toward absorption, where affordability, skills, trust, and institutional capacity determine whether access becomes useful.
• SDG 17 connects STI cooperation, technology transfer, financing, capacity building, and partnership with progress across the wider development agenda.
• Mobile money provides a pathway to SDG 1, No Poverty, while stronger market participation supports SDG 8, Decent Work and Economic Growth.
• Digital health contributes to SDG 3 when communication improves use of existing healthcare capacity.
• Digital education advances SDG 4 when connectivity expands effective access and instructional reach.
• Connected trade systems link SDG 9 with SDG 8 by reducing administrative friction and releasing working capital.
• Connected water and energy systems can support SDGs 6 and 7 while raising returns elsewhere in the digital economy.
• Technology transfer becomes durable development when it leaves operating knowledge and institutional competence behind.
• Concentrated digital investment can reinforce the disparities addressed by SDG 10 when weak absorptive capacity also deters capital.
• Leapfrogging can bypass portions of legacy infrastructure, but it cannot bypass the foundations modern systems require.
• Development multipliers emerge when progress in one technological or institutional system increases the usefulness of another.

Sources

• International Telecommunication Union; Measuring Digital Development Facts and Figures 2025; – Link
• United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs; Sustainable Development Goal 17 Partnerships for the Goals; – Link
• Institute of Internet Economics; Developing Nations 2026 Mid-Year Review Connectivity Is Becoming the First Development System; – Link

Access Becomes Valuable When It Changes Human Outcomes

• Science; The Long Run Poverty and Gender Impacts of Mobile Money; – Link
• BMJ Open; Using Digital Notifications to Improve Attendance in Clinic Systematic Review and Meta Analysis; – Link
• World Bank; Global Findex Database 2025; – Link

The Multiplier Appears When One Improvement Changes Another

• Kenya Trade Network Agency; Single Window System; – Link
• Kenya Trade Network Agency; Strategic Plan 2023/24–2027/28; – Link
• IMF, OECD, UNCTAD, World Bank and WTO; Digital Trade for Development; – Link

Technology Transfer Matters When Countries Can Absorb It

• UN Trade and Development; World Investment Report 2025 International Investment in the Digital Economy; – Link
• UN Trade and Development; International Investment in the Digital Economy A Toolkit for Policymakers; – Link
• United Nations Technology Bank for the Least Developed Countries; Technology Transfer Programme; – Link
• UN Trade and Development; Technology and Innovation Report 2025; – Link

Leapfrogging Changes the Development Path

• International Telecommunication Union; Facts and Figures 2025 Subscriptions; – Link
• International Telecommunication Union; Facts and Figures 2025 Affordability of ICT Services; – Link
• World Bank; Tracking SDG 7 The Energy Progress Report 2025; – Link

What Remains After the Partnership Matters Most

• United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs; Multi-Stakeholder Partnerships; – Link
• United Nations Technology Bank for the Least Developed Countries; Knowledge Hub; – Link
• UN Trade and Development; Productive Capacities Index; – Link
• Institute of Internet Economics; Human Impact of the Internet 2025 YE Review; – Link

Keywords: Economic Impact, Sustainable Development, Internet Technology, Technology Transfer, Absorptive Capacity, Development Multipliers, Global Partnership