World Bank’s 1st Digital Strategy

Why in news?

The World Bank (WB) Group has launched its first digital strategy to expand access and create jobs.

• Objective of WB’s digital strategy
  • To bring together its public and private sector capabilities to help developing countries expand affordable digital access, improve services, and create jobs.
  • Brings together the World Bank Group’s financing, policy advice, private investment, and guarantees around country priorities.
  • Provides a basis for working with governments, technology companies, development partners, and philanthropy to extend digital opportunities to more people and businesses.
  • To help countries turn digital access into higher productivity, better services, and more opportunities to earn a living.
• Need for this strategy – Developing countries face challenges such as
  • Limited financial resources
  • Growing demand for employment opportunities
• Over the next 10 to 15 years, around 1.2 billion young people will enter the working-age population in developing countries, while only about 420 million jobs are expected to be created.
• 4 priorities/focus areas –
  • Expanding connectivity;
  • Making devices and data more affordable;
  • Strengthening digital services and skills; and
  • Helping countries build the foundations to benefit from artificial intelligence.
• Focus on "Small AI" – Rather than concentrating only on advanced AI systems, the strategy promotes"Small AI", which refers to AI applications designed for specific local tasks such as
  • Detecting crop diseases for farmers
  • Assisting healthcare workers
  • Managing business inventories
  • Improving public service delivery.
• AI Infrastructure and Readiness Initiative – A new effort to help governments in emerging markets access affordable compute capacity—and put small AI to productive use—through shared, pay-as-you-go GPU infrastructure, offering a practical alternative to standalone national data centres.
• Initial focus – On Africa and Latin America, with knowledge partners including Cassava Technologies and NVIDIA.
• Challenges identified – Over 2 billion people were offline globally in 2025.
• Only 23% of people in low-income countries used the internet, compared with 94% in high-income countries.

Reference

World Bank Groups | World Bank Group Launches First Digital Strategy