Does Digital Development Really Deliver on the Promise of Poverty Reduction? Evidence From Argentina

Digital Inclusion in Urban America

The 21st century has seen several infectious disease outbreaks that have turned into epidemics and pandemics including Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) which began in Asia in 2003 (Poon, Guan, Nicholls, Yuen, & Peiris, 2004), followed by H1N1 that emerged in Mexico and the United States in 2009 (Belongia et al., 2010). Next came the lesser known Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) originating in Saudi Arabia in 2012 (Assiri et al., 2013), after which the Ebola outbreak in West Africa took place from 2014 to 2016, with a more recent occurrence in the Democratic Republic of Congo from 2018 to 2019 (Malvy, McElroy, de Clerck, Günther, & van Griensven, 2019). To date, the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak that started in Wuhan, in the Hubei province of China, in late December 2019 seems to be eclipsing all of these previous infectious diseases in terms of its global reach and impact (Wang, Horby, Hayden, & Gao, 2020). After being declared by the World Health Organization (WHO) as a public health emergency on 30 January 2020 (World Health Organization, 2020c), it was elevated to a pandemic status on 11 March 2020 (World Health Organization, 2020d). As of 28 April 2020, there are more than 2.9 million cases and 202,597 deaths reported worldwide (World Health Organization, 2020b).

There is a large body of research that has examined digital inequities, inequalities, and divides—i.e., those countries, communities, and individuals digitally left behind or disadvantaged. Whereas we know quite a lot about what is lacking and for whom, there is less focus on what works to alleviate these inequalities and divides in a variety of cultural contexts. This thematic issue brings together scholarship on digital inclusion initiatives and research from over 20 countries and in the context of numerous aspects, including different types of initiatives as well as different types of target audiences for these initiatives. Each article provides unique insights into what does and does not work in various communities, making recommendations on what could be done to improve the examined initiatives. We hope that the breadth and depth of articles presented here will be useful not just for academic audiences seeking to broaden their understanding of digital inclusion and ‘what can be done’ rather than focusing on ‘what is amiss,’ but also for policymakers and digital inclusion initiatives who are eager to expand and advance their digital inclusion work within their communities.

Higher education is a key pillar in constructing new knowledge economies for the 21st century, and the digitalization of higher education is a central focus area for national authorities. Visionary discourses from authorities state that the decision-making authority for digital strategies should be centralized to the domain of management. Digitalization is, however, driven by key features of modern technology and may also lead to the transformation of traditional educational methods as well as educational practices. Since the university contains several disciplines, different strategies can be used when products or processes within the disciplines are digitalized. It is important to consider in the ways that different disciplines can proceed to digitalize their educational practices. Based on these interests, our research question is as follows: how do digital strategies in higher education emerge, and how do they align with the educational context? Through a qualitative case study with interviews, participation in workshops, and document analyses, we investigated two digitalization efforts in the fields of medicine and law. We found that the two classical disciplines’ strategic approaches differed substantially. Based on the findings, our main contribution is a digitalization model with two archetypes, namely digital transformation strategy and digital innovation strategy. The model highlight the main object of the respective strategies, but also the institutional reaction to digitalization efforts. An implication from our study is the demonstration of how specific faculties adapt digital strategies to educational practices. This may sometimes lead to the transformation of educational practices, while other times more incremental moderate changes may be implemented. From a practical point of view, policymakers, politicians, educational management, and professionals need knowledge and expertise about the implications of digital strategies for educational practices. Our contribution, we propose, strengthens the understanding of strategies within digital infrastructures in higher education.

Evaluating a women's digital inclusion and storytelling initiative through the lens of empowerment

Individual educational strategies formation, experience acquisition in digital tools in constantly changing digital infrastructure is an important component of modern human’s life activity. The ways of forming individual digital educational strategies depending on people’s digital competence in the conditions of the Russian society digitalization have been determined. The empirical basis of the study was the results of a questionnaire survey conducted to determine digital competence and identify ways of forming digital educational strategies of the adult population in Volgograd. The empirical data show that the majority of respondents from 18 to 59 years old are interested in improving digital competence and predict to take refresher courses to improve digital skills and further self-education. Adults from 60 and older are significantly inferior to all age groups in their use of digital technologies. Depending on digital competence, respondents build individual strategies to improve digital literacy. The study results provided an opportunity to distinguish formal and informal ways of forming personal educational strategies and to design a matrix of multilevel and integrality of digital individual educational strategies. At the personal level, the integral character is manifested in the process of assessing digital competence without inclusion in the digital environment, and at the institutional level - in digital multilevel educational infrastructure development. The designed matrix contributes to a convenient and accessible digital infrastructure construction for all age groups and to digital strategies development at the institutional level in accordance with the population needs.

Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) are of great importance in today’s society and have permeated different aspects of human life. In fact, access to them is now considered a fundamental right. There exists, however, a gap between individuals and populations who have access to these technologies and those who do not, which has led to social exclusion. In addition, the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the effects of this disparity. In this regard, digital inclusion, through ICTs, becomes a strategy to close not only technical but also social gaps, thereby bringing well-being to vulnerable groups and favouring compliance with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Given the importance and topicality of this matter, we conducted a bibliometric analysis, which aims to answer what are the main trends in digital inclusion and digital divide studies and what are the challenges facing digital inclusion initiatives in the social context? For this purpose, we applied a search equation in Scopus and used VOSviewer. With this analysis, we were able to identify the evolution of publications over time and the main authors, countries and topics in the field, and the trends and challenges in digital inclusion initiatives. Finally, we conclude that this study can be used to address other research topics, such as the role of ICTs in the promotion of the SDGs through digital inclusion initiatives, the psychosocial aspects of technology adoption and the need for public policies that serve as a platform for digital and social inclusion.

The Institutional Logic of Digitalization

PurposeThis paper explores how policy-level stakeholders tackle digital inclusion in the context of UK rural communities.Design/methodology/approachSemi-structured interviews were conducted with stakeholders that operate nationally in government departments, government funded organisations and third sector organisations that provided a policy-level perspective on digital inclusion initiative provision across England, Scotland and Wales. Activity theory (AT) was utilised as a theoretical framework, where a variety of factors–tools, rules, community, division of labour and contradictions–were found to have an influence on digital inclusion initiative provision.FindingsDigital inclusion initiative provision in UK rural communities is organised through the multi-stakeholder involvement of national organisations, and collaboration with intermediary organisations to provide digital skills training and support. The process is fraught with difficulties and contradictions, limited knowledge sharing; reduced or poor-quality connectivity; lack of funding; lack of local resources; assumptions that organisations will indeed collaborate and assumptions that intermediary organisations have staff with the necessary skills and confidence to provide digital skills training and support within the rural context.Research limitations/implicationsThis study highlights the benefit of using AT as a lens to develop a nuanced understanding of how policy-level stakeholders tackle digital inclusion.Practical implicationsThis study can inform policy decisions on digital inclusion initiative provision suitable for rural communities.Originality/valueThe contribution of this paper provides new insights into the understanding of how policy-level stakeholders tackle digital inclusion and the provision of digital inclusion initiatives; it builds on the use of AT to help unpick the complexity of digital inclusion initiative provision as a phenomenon; it reveals contradictions in relation to trust, and the need for knowledge sharing mechanisms to span and align different interpretations of digital inclusion across the policy-level; and reveals an extension of AT demonstrated through the “granularity of the subject” which enables the multi-actor involvement of the stakeholders involved in digital inclusion at policy-level to emerge.

In 2004 the United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER) embarked on a large-scale research project on the ‘Impact of Globalization on the World’s Poor’ co-directed by Machiko Nissanke and Erik Thorbecke. The first conference was essentially conceptual in nature, meant to understand better the various mechanisms and channels through which globalization affects the poor either directly or indirectly. The other three conferences focused on each of the major regions of the developing world: Asia, Africa and Latin America. Theobjectivesofthisintroductionarethreefold:first,toreviewbrieflyhow the forces of globalization influence poverty in general; second, to describe and discuss the main transmission channels and mechanisms; and third to analyze the impact of globalization on Africa and present an overview of the six Africa case studies included in this issue. 1. The Impact of Globalization on the World’s Poor Globalization provides a strong potential for a major reduction in poverty in the developing world because it creates an environment conducive to fastereconomicgrowthandtransmissionofknowledge. 1 However,structural factors and policies within the world economy and national economies have impeded the full transmission of the benefits of the various channels of globalization for poverty reduction. In particular sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) hasbeenrelativelylessaffectedbytheforcesofglobalizationthanotherparts of the world. World income distribution continues to be very unequal and many poor countries particularly in Africa are stagnating. Moreover, there is much empirical evidence that openness contributes to more within-country

New digital technologies, such as cloud computing, big data, artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things (IoT) are designed to maximize efficiency, enable economies of scale and develop new services. They offer benefits to users, such as agility, productivity, speed of deployment and autonomy. In the sector of Legal Metrology, it must be ensured that digital system architectures, digital services, and digital infrastructures are legally compatible. To benefit the stakeholders in this sector, the industry, the notified bodies and the market surveillance/verification authorities alike, the digital transformation of Legal Metrology shall remove barriers to innovation within the legal processes and reduce costs and time to market for new digital products. To this end a European consortium has formed to establish a digital quality infrastructure; the “European Metrology Cloud”, designed to support the processes of conformity assessment and market surveillance/verification and the development of reference architectures and new technology- and data-driven services for this infrastructure. With this approach, the digital single market that the European Commission envisions will be fostered. This article analyzes how recent regulations within the digital single market strategy of the commission - the Data Protection Police Directive (2016/679/EU) and the Regulation on a framework for the free flow of non-personal data in the European Union (Regulation (EU) 2018/1807) – may be integrated into the European Metrology Cloud initiative to, e.g. guaranty that its underlying Blockchain approach complies to these norms and exploit their benefits.

Mining Development and Opportunities for Poverty Reduction and Human Development in Latin America

In 2005, Ghana initiated its digital governance strategy, this has resulted in Ghana becoming one of the fastest-growing countries on the African continent noted for flagship initiatives on Government-to-citizens digital systems. However, the have been some concerns from a section of the Ghanaian population about the impacts of these laudable initiatives, especially since 2017. This study aims to investigate citizen's perceptions of digitization initiatives embarked on by the Government of Ghana, in terms of the benefits and challenges of accessing the digital governance services in Ghana. The researcher adopted an online survey questionnaire to collect data from 1, 964 Ghanaians for six months, thus from June 1 2020 to December 1, 2020, on their perceptions of the digital governance initiatives. A total of 1, 964 questionnaires were validly responded to, which translates to 65.4 % of the targeted population for the study. The key finding according to this study revealed that digital governance initiatives in Ghana have greatly help to reduce corruption, increase productivity, and increased citizens e-participation in governance. Despite the key benefits identified by this study, participants also reported challenges such as high-cost internet data and the lack of a legal framework to protect users of digital governance service as key hindrances to digital governance initiatives in Ghana. This study concludes that 68% of citizens see the digital governance services embarked on by the government as beneficial and are easy to use.

Despite the expansive infrastructure of commercial banking in Kenya, a large percentage of the country’s population is excluded from access to formal banking services/products. Further, there is insufficiency of credible information on the manner that digital banking strategies relates to inclusion on access to financial services. Accordingly, this study was in search of bridging the gap with the objective of evaluating the effects of the digital banking strategy on financial inclusion midst commercial banks in Kajiado County (a case of Kenya commercial bank in Kajiado county). This research utilised quantitative methods and espoused descriptive research design. It regarded the 323 Kenya commercial banks outlets (branches and bank agents) in Kajiado County for its target population and obtained a sample size of 179 respondents. A closed-ended questionnaire was administered using drop and pick approach, was developed for gathering data to be acquired from primary sources. This research adopted quantitative analysis approach to yield descriptive statistics and inferential statistics. The study concludes that at 5% error level, digital banking channels, digital financial infrastructure, convenience of digital financial services, have a statistical positive significant effect on financial inclusion among commercial banks in Kajiado county while digital service offering has a statistically insignificant effect on financial inclusion among commercial banks in Kajiado county. The study recommends that the commercial banks in Kajiado should, provide digital banking services to areas that are not easily accessible, acquire adequate infrastructure facilities and adopt efficient technology, offer simple, cost effective and secure services to their customers and provide wide variety of digital service.

Globalization has produced a wide range of convergence effects. Digital strategies, popular in developed countries, have won a more durable favor among and followed by developing countries, and become the focus of their development, which is also determined by the fact that digital strategies serve as a tremendous impetus in promoting national economic growth and political governance. However, different from the digital development pattern adopted by developed countries, which is mainly based on the spontaneous growth of the market, the situation in developing countries often encounters more serious market malfunction, hence, government’s intervention and the role of transnational capital under open pattern are more needed. Therefore, the construction of a digital development strategy model for developing countries based on the supply side perspective is supposed to include at least the following elements: government, domestic private capital, and transnational capital as well as the interactions among them. Based on this framework, this paper also analyzes how the digital strategy was formulated and implemented in India. The development of India’s digital strategy suggests that a clear digital strategy can generate positive results, specifically, through establishing government-oriented public–private partnership, the construction of digital infrastructure can be strengthened, the leading industries in the digital field can get strong support, and the spillover effect of digital strategy can get enough attention from parties concerned. However, just as every coin has two sides, the other side of digital strategy shouldn’t be neglected. Digital strategy itself can only accelerate the development of a country, but it cannot fundamentally solve other internal problems existing in the economic and social development of a country, such as the limited role of the government rendered by national fiscal conditions, deep-rooted regional differentiation, improper policy-making orientation as well as conservatism, which will make it difficult for the government, private capital and transnational capital to achieve synergistic effect at a higher level, thus, restricting the realization of the national digital development strategy.