9. July 2020

Beyond Covid-19: Connectivity and digitisation empowers people in developing countries

Op-ed by Amb. Martin Dahinden in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ). The original text in German can be found here. The English version prepared with the help of Google translate you find below.

Martin Dahinden is a member of the Advisory Group of UNICEF New York as well as a former director of the SDC and Swiss Ambassador to the USA. In the beginning of 2020 he joined the Board of the ICT4Peace Foundation.

In many developing countries, the corona pandemic has dramatic consequences. Besides disease, rising food prices and falling incomes are leading to a rapid increase in hunger and poverty. Closed schools not only interrupt lessons. For many children and young people in developing countries, the only full meal is no longer available and an important place of protection against violence disappears. Rapid action is required. Discussions have begun worldwide about the impact of Covid-19 on developing countries and on development cooperation. Everything indicates that digitalization and connectivity will quickly gain in importance.

Education and health are the keys to overcoming poverty, alongside nutrition. 188 countries have closed schools and other educational institutions either partially or completely during Covid-19. 1.5 billion children and young people are affected. Web-based distance learning is experiencing an impressive upswing. Access to the Internet determines who can access learning opportunities and who is left behind. The digital divide makes one of the main social tasks of school impossible: improving equal opportunities. The UN Children’s Fund UNICEF was virtually crushed by requests for web-based distance learning and the necessary infrastructure. But it’s not just about responding to the pandemic, it’s also about a better future. UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore has in mind that in future every school worldwide will be connected to the Internet. This would make it possible to access knowledge and learning tools with relatively modest effort.

The digital divide is also having a negative impact on the second key area for overcoming poverty, healthcare. The Internet is also a platform for health-related information for the prevention and management of pandemics, but also for telemedicine, psychosocial care and other services. Information and communication technology is not a completely new topic for development cooperation. Development experts often argue that digitization and connectivity are not really development cooperation goals. That is correct. But they have great potential to achieve development goals. Today, development cooperation too often follows old paths and, above all, does provide non available government services. Strengthening connectivity and digitization would enable people in developing countries to take their own initiatives across a broad spectrum and connect with global developments, which would also be an alternative to isolation and retreat behind national borders, which may under the impression of Covid-19 postulate.

Digitization also involves risks for which many developing countries are insufficiently prepared. These include cybercrime, cyberattacks and the spread of false information. Capacity building is important and urgent. In current development cooperation this plays a subordinate role. The Swiss strategy for international cooperation 2021-2024 is currently being debated in parliament. Fortunately, digitization is mentioned as a priority topic. This area is in an early stage of development and is worthy of being vigorously expanded in the coming years.