Building on gains of digitalisation

The digital economy is expanding fast in the global South. Developing economies, led by China and India, accounted for nearly 90% of the 750 million people that went online for the fi rst time between 2012 and 2015.

Digitalisation is fuelling the rise of 3D printing, artificial intelligence, the Internet of things, cloud computing, big data and automation. Although the transformational power of digitalisation is clear, effective policies are needed to make sure the gains are spread evenly across as well as within countries, according to Unctad’s Information Economy Report 2017.

The study points out that more than half of the world’s population still remains offline, and the pace of growth in access and use is slowing. This is particularly true of the least developed countries, where only one in six people used the Internet in 2016. Here’s a look...