Digital transformation is a complex process that carries enormous potential for human development and economic growth but is not free of challenges. A combination of factors includes but is not limited to: Micro Small Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) funding possibilities and adequate regulatory frameworks, digitalisation of business and industrial processes, efficient and affordable infrastructure availability, inclusive digital literacy, continuous perfecting of digital skills, and user-centric e-services governance.  

Digital transformation is revolutionising ways of doing business across all sectors and disciplines. Emerging technologies carry an enormous potential for positive change in terms of promoting resilience, sustainability and inclusion. But this requires strong awareness and capacity building efforts to meet the challenges of creating technologies that are truly inclusive and crafted to the real needs of societies.

With emerging technologies already impacting the global labour market and some of their practical applications and risks still to be discovered, acquiring talent, and maintaining employees competent to deal with technological developments is strategically important. Access to technologies will tend to be less of a challenge than finding the manpower able to exploit them. Talent drains are common in the digital sector, as is difficulty finding the equitable conditions to manage labour-employer relationships.

The spatial distribution of the world’s population continues to change. In 2000, around 47 per cent lived in urban areas. That proportion increased to 55 per cent in 2018. The global share of the urban population is projected to rise further to 60 per cent by 2030. By then, one-third of the world’s people are estimated to be living in cities with at least half a million inhabitants.  

The Internet serves as the primary tool both for mass and point-to-point communication, and as such it provides the global infrastructure for the information society. Innovations based on information and communication technologies (ICTs) empower individuals to exercise their rights and provide an opportunity for institutions to mobilise collective actions, by putting megabytes of information and knowledge right at their fingertips, wherever they live, work or operate. However, connectivity is not sufficient on its own.

The fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the need to take concerted action to revive the stifled global economy and unlock growth factors in both developed and developing countries. Global economic growth was uneven even before the pandemic, as was progress on the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Countries now have a chance to leverage the economic recovery as an opportunity towards sustainable and inclusive development.