Before sunrise in Kenya, a truck carrying fresh food starts a route that crosses farms, warehouses, road corridors, depots, wholesalers, and retailers before the day is done. Not long ago, much of that journey unfolded in a haze of...
A student waits for coursework to download on a shared low-end smartphone while the connection resets and the file fails to load.
For much of the past two decades, the digital divide was defined by a binary threshold: being online....
The central question is straightforward: as the United Nations confronts sustained funding contraction, what becomes of the wide range of internet-enabled gains shaping poverty reduction, public health, economic inclusion, and overall human development?
As of 2023, approximately 5.4 billion people...
Connectivity, Demographics, and the Quiet Rewiring of Financial Access
Mobile money’s emergence as financial infrastructure is inseparable from a more fundamental shift: the rapid expansion of mobile connectivity across emerging economies. Over the past decade, mobile phone penetration in low-...
For billions of people, connectivity determines whether wages arrive on time, whether remittances can be withdrawn, whether clinics respond, and whether small businesses can operate for the day. Across Africa, South Asia, Latin America, and parts of the Middle...
The Internet as the Place We Live
The internet is no longer something most people “go on.” It is where modern life happens, quietly, constantly, and by default. More than six billion people are online today, representing roughly three-quarters of...
Poverty as a hierarchy of constraints – and the problem of access
Poverty is best understood as a cumulative failure of systems rather than a single shortage of income. Empirical research shows that households fall into poverty when multiple constraints...
Super-apps have long been described as powerful commercial tools - massive platforms capable of blending communication, payments, transport, commerce, and social services into a single interface. Yet this description understates their true significance. In many parts of the world,...
Unsafe drinking water and inadequate sanitation remain among the most persistent drivers of illness in low-income regions. Global monitoring shows that more than 1.7 billion people rely on drinking water sources contaminated with faeces, and unsafe water and sanitation...
The rapid expansion of internet connectivity and modern digital technologies has become one of the most influential forces reshaping economic development, public-service delivery, and social opportunity worldwide. As countries work toward the first eight UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)—poverty,...
