- From Internet Access to Employment: World Bank Unveils New Digital Development Plan
The World Bank Group has launched its first digital strategy, placing connectivity, affordability, digital skills and artificial intelligence readiness at the centre of its effort to help developing countries create jobs and deliver better services.
The strategy arrives at a consequential moment. Over the next 10 to 15 years, 1.2 billion young people are expected to enter working age across developing economies, while those countries are projected to generate only about 420 million jobs. That leaves a potential gap of roughly 780 million opportunities, turning employment creation into one of the defining development tests of the coming decade.
Digitalisation cannot close that gap alone. But the World Bank’s decision to bring its public and private sector capabilities under one framework reflects a growing recognition that technology is no longer a narrow telecommunications issue. It now influences how firms find customers, how governments deliver services, how workers acquire skills and how economies compete for investment.
“Digital technology can help countries create jobs and make scarce resources go further,” World Bank Group President Ajay Banga said. “Realizing that potential requires a comprehensive approach—from reliable connectivity and affordable devices to digital skills and useful services.”
That comprehensive approach matters because network coverage does not automatically produce meaningful digital participation. More than 2 billion people remained offline in 2025, while only 23 per cent of people in low-income countries used the internet, compared with 94 per cent in high-income economies.
Many excluded citizens already live within the reach of a mobile network. Their problem is affordability, access to suitable devices, limited digital literacy or the absence of services useful enough to justify the cost of connecting. The development challenge is therefore shifting from merely building networks to ensuring that people can afford, trust and productively use them.
The strategy’s first priority is reliable connectivity. The World Bank Group intends to support infrastructure across the entire network chain, including international cables, national backbone systems and last-mile connections serving homes, businesses, schools and clinics.
Its proposed tools include shared infrastructure, stronger competition, public financing and guarantees designed to attract private capital into markets investors may otherwise regard as commercially unattractive. It also proposes joint planning where communities lack both electricity and internet access, acknowledging that digital infrastructure cannot function without dependable power.
Affordability forms the second pillar. The World Bank Group will work with manufacturers, telecommunications companies, financial institutions and device-refurbishment businesses to lower the price of entry-level smartphones and broadband services. It also supports responsible financing arrangements that allow consumers to pay for devices over time.
The third priority moves beyond infrastructure to digital services and skills. The strategy supports digital identification, payments and secure information-sharing systems intended to make public and private services easier to access. It also proposes literacy and employment-linked training to help citizens and small businesses use technology safely and productively.
This is where digital investment can translate most directly into jobs. Connectivity becomes economically meaningful when a small business can receive payments, obtain finance, reach customers or participate in a supply chain. Equally, a digital identity becomes valuable when it enables a citizen to open an account, register a company, receive public benefits or demonstrate qualifications.
The World Bank has identified infrastructure and energy, agribusiness, healthcare, tourism and value-added manufacturing as priority sectors. Digital tools can improve productivity in each, but governments will need to resist treating technology as a substitute for sector reform. An online platform cannot compensate for poor logistics, unreliable electricity, weak institutions or limited access to capital.
The fourth pillar concerns readiness for artificial intelligence. Rather than encouraging developing countries to compete immediately in expensive frontier models, the strategy emphasises “small AI”: practical systems adapted to particular tasks, languages and local conditions.
Banga described this as “AI for the people”. Examples include tools that help farmers identify crop diseases, assist health workers or enable businesses to manage inventory. The attraction is clear: smaller applications may require less computing power, be cheaper to deploy and solve immediate productivity problems.
Alongside the strategy, the World Bank Group announced an AI Infrastructure and Readiness Initiative initially focused on Africa and Latin America. Working with knowledge partners including Cassava Technologies and NVIDIA, it plans to help emerging-market governments access shared, pay-as-you-go graphics-processing capacity rather than construct standalone national data centres.
The model could lower entry costs and prevent governments from committing scarce public resources to facilities that may become obsolete or remain underused.
However, access to computing capacity is only one part of AI readiness. Useful local data, skilled workers, regulatory clarity and strong institutions will determine whether countries become producers of relevant solutions or merely consumers of imported systems. Without deliberate investment in local capability, digitalisation could widen existing inequalities between countries, businesses and workers.
The strategy consequently places privacy, cybersecurity and fraud protection across all four priorities. These safeguards are fundamental. A digital ecosystem that expands rapidly without protecting personal data or securing payments may undermine the trust on which adoption depends. The poorest users often have the least capacity to absorb losses from fraud or challenge unfair automated decisions.
The World Bank Group says it will combine financing, policy advice, private investment and guarantees around national priorities while working with governments, technology companies, development partners and philanthropic organisations.
The ambition is substantial, but implementation will be the real test globally. Countries will need measurable targets covering coverage, price, usage, skills, employment and service quality not simply kilometres of fibre laid or devices distributed.
The strategy’s most important message is that digital access is a means, not an outcome. Success will be determined by whether technology raises productivity, improves services and enables people to earn sustainable incomes.
With hundreds of millions of jobs potentially missing from the developing world’s demographic future, the stakes extend far beyond faster internet. The challenge is to convert connection into capability, capability into enterprise and enterprise into employment. The World Bank has now supplied a framework. Governments, investors and institutions must prove that digital promise can become broadly shared economic progress.
