Article Type: Expert comment

The rise in the use of digital technologies – particularly mobile phones – has led to an exponential rise in digital data. A lot of new data is being generated by people in communities that have previously not been represented, thanks to cheaper, more accessible phones and service plans. Historically, the traditional source of data

Despite the growth of smartphone adoption and mobile internet access around the world, the majority of underserved populations in emerging markets still depend on core mobile channels – primarily voice, SMS and Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) – for communication, which are provided by mobile network operators (MNOs). However, working with MNOs has its challenges

Twitter posts, credit card purchases, phone calls, and satellites are all part of our day-to-day digital landscape. Detailed data, known broadly as “big data” because of the massive amounts of passively collected and high-frequency information that such interactions generate, are produced every time we use one of these technologies. These digital traces have great potential

The Digital Impact Alliance (DIAL) and the ITU (the UN’s information and computing technology agency) have joined forces and launched a program of work aimed at using technology to help the world meet the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)—a set of 17 goals and 169 targets for global development. Given the breadth of the SDGs,

Last week in Nay Pyi Taw, Myanmar, over 300 representatives from South and Southeast Asia Ministries of Health and global digital health experts gathered for the fifth general meeting of the Asian eHealth Information Network (AeHIN), a group that fosters peer-to-peer learning and networking with the goal of strengthening health systems through information and communication

Matt Haikin, an ICT for Development (ICT4D) practitioner, summarizes a new paper on digital development in East Africa reports and the challenges for Oxfam and other international NGOs. I’d been living in Nairobi for a couple of months, meeting all the interesting ‘tech for good’ types I could find (and there are a LOT for