The rapid spread of digital technologies has been a development success. But has it also resulted in successful development? No, not when the basic foundations of economic development are missing, argues the World Development Report 2016: Digital Dividends.
Increased prosperity and our incessant desire to stay connected have contributed to the rapid spread of digital technologies. More households in developing countries own a mobile phone than have access to electricity or clean water. Nearly 70 percent of the bottom-fifth of the population in developing countries own a mobile phone. The number of Internet users has more than tripled in the last decade—from 1 billion in 2005 to an estimated 3.2 billion at the end of 2015.
Read the rest of this blog here.
This post originally appeared in Future Development at Brookings Institution.
Join the Conversation