The Future of Knowledge Sharing in a Digital Age: Exploring Impacts and Policy Implications for Development

We live in a Digital Age that gives us instant access to information at greater and greater volumes. The rapid growth of digital content and tools is already changing how we create, consume and distribute knowledge. Even though globally participation in the Digital Age remains uneven, more and more people are accessing and contributing digital content every day. Over the next 15 years, developing countries are likely to experience sweeping changes in how states and societies engage with knowledge. These changes hold the potential to improve people’s lives by making information more available, increasing avenues for political and economic engagement, and making government more transparent and responsive. But they also carry dangers of a growing knowledge divide influenced by technology access, threats to privacy, and the potential loss of diversity of knowledge. Our research sets out with a 15-year horizon to look at the possible ways in which digital technologies might contribute to or damage development agendas, and how development practitioners and policymakers might best respond.