Digital technologies are reaching ever further into remote parts of the world,
changing how people access, use, and create information and knowledge.
These changes may improve people’s lives by making information more
available, increasing avenues for political and economic engagement, and
making governments more transparent and responsive. However, they also carry
dangers of growing digital divides, threats to privacy, and the potential loss of
diversity of knowledge. Governments, development agencies and civil society
organisations need to work together to make knowledge more inclusive and
open. This calls for investment in Information and Communications Technology
(ICT) infrastructure, information professionals, and search and discovery tools.UK Department for International Developmen

Bimbe, N

Brownlee, J

Gregson, J

Playforth, R

English

IDS OpenDocs

www.ids.ac.uk
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ISSUE 87 • FEBRUARY 2015
Digital technologies are reaching ever further into remote parts of the world, 
changing how people access, use, and create information and knowledge. 
These changes may improve people’s lives by making information more 
available, increasing avenues for political and economic engagement, and 
making governments more transparent and responsive. However, they also carry 
dangers of growing digital divides, threats to privacy, and the potential loss of 
diversity of knowledge. Governments, development agencies and civil society 
organisations need to work together to make knowledge more inclusive and 
open. This calls for investment in Information and Communications Technology 
(ICT) infrastructure, information professionals, and search and discovery tools. 
“The next 15 
years will 
see a rapid 
acceleration in 
new ways of 
creating, finding, 
and sharing, 
knowledge, 
and this will 
mean new 
opportunities 
and challenges 
for development 
agendas 
and efforts 
worldwide.”
 Knowledge Sharing and 
 Development in a Digital Age
The digital age and knowledge 
sharing
The next 15 years will see a rapid 
acceleration in new ways of creating, 
finding, and sharing, knowledge, and 
this will mean new opportunities and 
challenges for development agendas 
and efforts worldwide. Some estimate 
that by 2020, up to 100 billion devices 
will be connected to the internet, and 
that by 2025, nearly all of the world’s 
population will be online. Through new 
technologies there are fewer barriers 
to joining in, knowledge creation is 
becoming more social and participative, 
and the line between consumer and 
producer is blurring. Crowdsourcing 
will continue to open up more spaces 
for participation in governance and in a 
range of development programmes. 
In 2014, the Institute of Development 
Studies (IDS) conducted a horizon 
scanning research project to look at 
digital technologies and their potential 
impact on development over the 
coming 15 years. Using Foresight 
methods – a range of horizon-scanning 
tools and approaches based on scenario 
development – this research gathered 
knowledge and insights from a range of 
people working with digital technologies 
representing different perspectives: 
development agencies, government, 
librarians, ICT professionals and the 
private sector. Through interviews 
and two workshops, in London and 
Centurion, South Africa, participants 
identified key drivers of change and 
developed scenarios for different futures. 
From these, a ‘preferred scenario’ 
representing an ideal vision of the future 
emerged, and participants formulated 
strategies and policies to help realise 
that vision.  
Opportunities for knowledge 
sharing and development
Digital technologies will create 
opportunities for more effective 
development in the following ways: 
• Access and availability: If the 
growing range of digital materials 
are made open and available it will 
improve information access, lower 
barriers to market entry, and enable 
a much wider cross section of the 
population to acquire knowledge 
skills and credentials through online 
learning. Digital repositories or other 
knowledge sharing systems will 
enable research and knowledge-based 
services relevant to development to be 
more available and accessible, and local 
research will be more visible. Methods 
such as crowdsourcing, which draws 
on knowledge and skills from large 
groups of ordinary people, will ensure 
that research agendas are more aligned with 
needs on the ground. 
• Governance and service delivery: Digital 
tools and crowdsourcing approaches can 
increase and improve citizen voice and 
government transparency allowing citizens 
to be more informed about budgets, issues, 
and upcoming decisions. Digital technologies 
will also improve service delivery. Data on 
health, education, infrastructure, social 
protection and other government sectors 
will be more abundant and more tools will 
be available to analyse them. Civil society 
can become more effective advocates and 
intermediaries through better knowledge 
sharing and availability of information.
• Quality and relevance of knowledge: 
Digital technologies have the potential for  
high impact by disrupting current regimes of 
knowledge production and publication, and 
enabling poor regions to become producers 
rather than net recipients of relevant 
development knowledge about themselves. 
This can happen if networks and incentive 
systems and structures are established that 
support local knowledge production, peer 
review and distribution. 
• Wisdom of the crowd: Crowdsourcing 
methods are becoming a powerful tool 
to help development initiatives become 
better targeted, informed and researched. 
Crowdsourcing can generate new innovative 
solutions by bringing together sectoral 
experts from throughout the globe with 
community members.
Threats and barriers
Digital technologies also pose threats to 
development principles of equality and 
democratic rights: 
• Growing disparities: Perhaps the biggest 
threat posed by a digital age is that rather 
than leading to greater equalities of 
opportunities and outcomes, it creates new 
disparities or exacerbates existing ones. 
Current digital divides mirror economic 
ones and these could become reinforced 
with a growing knowledge divide based 
on levels of access. Without policies and 
strategies to develop capacities and skills 
among vulnerable groups, the poor will 
be left behind. At the other end of the 
spectrum, we are already seeing the way 
that the Internet’s winner-take-all effect 
is creating a small group with extreme 
wealth and power. And there will likely be 
huge differences in infrastructure and skills 
between rural and urban areas in developing 
countries. 
• Privacy, censorship and control: In the 
wrong hands digital technologies can add 
to the ‘authoritarianism toolkit’ by providing 
ever more effective methods of surveillance, 
censorship and control. Privacy issues arise 
not only through invasive spying regimes but 
can also be an issue if information is ‘too’ 
open. Public records and data on individuals’ 
health or spending habits can provide 
valuable information for the public good, but 
could also be used maliciously. 
• Information overload: Efficiencies in 
making knowledge available and accessible 
have reduced, in the minds of the public, 
the need for information intermediaries 
and professionals. When most information 
needs can be fulfilled online, the increasingly 
relevant skills that go into curating materials, 
making it visible, and helping to guide 
people to what they need, becomes largely 
invisible.
• Homogenisation of knowledge: There is 
a danger that digital trends will result in 
a global homogenisation of knowledge 
toward the mainstream. Rather than 
giving local knowledge a greater chance 
to flourish, a free flow of knowledge could 
increasingly edge out voices that do not fit 
within dominant discourses.
Using digital technologies to achieve 
a more prosperous, just and equal 
society in Africa by 2030
Created as part of a project using Foresight 
methods, this scenario outlines how digital 
technologies can be used to greatest effect 
to accelerate development progress in Africa 
by 2030.
What will the world look like in 2030?
Who would have thought it possible, back in 
2015 when they were drafting the Sustainable 
Development Goals (SDGs), how much could 
have changed for the better in 15 years? 
Internet is now seen as a basic right, and 
even the poor have a minimum allocation 
of internet access. This was accomplished 
largely through the pursuit of prudent policies 
based on a few principles that were agreed 
on globally and implemented by national 
governments, and crowdsourced feedback 
mechanisms that enabled citizens to hold 
the international community to account for 
delivering an open and fair digital society.
KNOWLEDGE SHARING AND DEVELOPMENT IN A DIGITAL AGE ISSUE 87 • FEBRUARY 2015 www.ids.ac.uk
“Digital 
technologies 
have the 
potential for 
high impact 
by disrupting 
current regimes 
of knowledge 
production 
and publication, 
and enabling 
poor regions 
to become 
producers 
rather than 
net recipients 
of relevant 
development 
knowledge 
about 
themselves.”
KNOWLEDGE SHARING AND DEVELOPMENT IN A DIGITAL AGE ISSUE 87 • FEBRUARY 2015 www.ids.ac.uk
“Who would 
have thought it 
possible, back in 
2015 when they 
were drafting 
the Sustainable 
Development 
Goals (SDGs), 
how much 
could have 
changed for 
the better in 15 
years? Internet 
is now seen as a 
basic right, and 
even the poor 
have a minimum 
allocation of 
internet access.”
For this to happen, agreements to build a 
global ICT-based knowledge infrastructure 
were drafted and set into motion through 
the mechanics of the SDGs framed back in 
2015. Although global leaders held different 
views on the cost-benefit of extending ICT 
infrastructures to more remote regions, most 
nations have now extended internet access 
to over 90 per cent of their populations, with 
active involvement of government bodies 
down to the village level. For researchers, 
government policy and implementing bodies, 
and development practitioners, openness also 
includes access to research documentation, 
datasets and government records. 
An Africa-wide repository of locally-produced 
research automatically harvests documents 
from universities and research institutes 
throughout Africa, making them easily 
available and searchable. A pan-African 
research body administers the system, and 
has set up a peer review system that ensures 
the quality of materials in the repository. In 
addition, under this research scheme, African 
national governments have implemented 
policies to incentivise publishing in the 
repository. The result has been a marked 
rise in local contributions to literature on 
local development, which has improved the 
quantity and relevance of development-to-
development efforts, and helped to set new 
agendas for both research and development. 
Information and data scientists, librarians 
and knowledge intermediaries play a vital 
role in this pan-African research council and 
its repository system. New documents and 
data sets are being produced in heaps, and 
information professionals are needed at all 
levels to make sure that they are all easily 
searchable and discoverable. They are also a 
much used resource to help guide people to 
the information they need. 
Technology has also made education more 
widely available. Massive Open Online 
Courses (MOOCs) have not totally changed 
the education business model, but have 
become one of a number of important 
approaches in helping to increase access to 
good education. The availability of information 
and knowledge has also made it easier for 
students to find what they need even in 
remote areas. Most importantly, new models 
of knowledge sharing have enabled more 
African researchers to contribute to global 
online education systems, joining the ranks of 
globally famous online lecturers that previously 
came exclusively from Western universities. 
In addition, governments have prioritised 
capacity to use all the knowledge available at 
all levels of education. 
Government services have also improved 
from online systems. Through crowdsourcing 
and large amounts of data, the government 
is able to get a much more granular view of 
citizens’ needs and thus target policies and 
programmes more accurately. Budgets and 
procurement are all transparent for watchdog 
organisations to scrutinise, and through 
crowdsourcing we are able to participate in 
policy discussions. 
The digital age has ushered in new opportunities, 
reaching all the way to remote villages, 
and this has resulted in a stronger global 
economy with a lot less inequality and poverty. 
Social entrepreneurship, Corporate Social 
Responsibility (CSR) and profit sharing with 
workers has become widespread and at the 
national and international levels incentives serve 
to increase competition and break monopolies. 
With so much information available to all, 
privacy is an ongoing public debate. There are 
variations country by country on, for example, 
how much of your health information can 
be made available to government and to the 
public for medical research purposes. But in 
every case the general principle of the right 
to privacy stands, and debates about specific 
spheres of privacy are open and transparent. 
Some worry that life and society nowadays 
are too much about data. That we are blind to 
problems that resist ‘datafication’, and much 
less able to find solutions. True, citizens insist 
that the algorithms that determine so much of 
our life must remain transparent, so that civil 
society groups can monitor the thoughts and 
values that go into crafting them. But as they 
get more and more sophisticated, sometimes 
it feels that we are being asked to trust that 
the computers have our best interest in mind. 
Mostly, though, it seems that the ‘opt out’ talk 
is about a discomfort with the amount of data 
we each produce and the potential for our data 
to someday fall into the wrong hands. Even 
though most people believe that government 
policies toward privacy, transparency, and data 
use are working well for now, it is good that 
these worries can be freely aired and discussed.
Policy recommendations
To go some way toward achieving this vision, we recommend policies and strategies 
in four areas:
 • Cross-cutting principles: For technological change to benefit the poor and to 
close digital divides, strategies toward principles of universal access and inclusive 
knowledge are needed. The poor should participate in developing knowledge 
infrastructure and systems that benefit them. Research institutions, 
governments, and development organisations should pursue strategies toward 
open knowledge through better incentives, capacity development and advocacy. 
Openness needs to be balanced with ownership, privacy and security 
considerations, but currently tilts far to the closed side.
 • Creating the right environment: Governments, regional bodies and international 
development agencies need strong cooperation on improving ICT-based 
knowledge sharing infrastructure, developing a common set of goals and 
meaningful metrics, and incentivising knowledge sharing across borders and 
institutions. This cooperation could be framed by the Sustainable Development 
Goals, which should more explicitly address and monitor digital opportunities 
and threats. 
 • Human capacity: Governments and development agencies should invest in the 
capacity of knowledge intermediaries, librarians, and information and data scientists 
working at the intersection of development, information science and 
governance. Universities and governments should incentivise African research and 
encourage publishing through cooperative, peer-reviewed open access platforms. 
School curricula from primary school upwards should emphasise digital literacy 
and skills. 
• Infrastructure and tools: Most of the above recommendations hinge on 
coordinated investment in ICT infrastructure at local, national, and regional 
levels by governments and development agencies. This investment should 
also be framed as part of the Sustainable Development Goals, and Financing for 
Development processes. This includes investment in developing more effective 
knowledge sharing systems and digital repositories. Ongoing improvements for 
search and discovery tools are needed to make them more powerful and intuitive. 
Crowdsourcing tools should be developed to help improve participation in public 
discourse and development research, and to improve government service 
delivery and accountability.
IDS POLICY BRIEFING ISSUE 87 • FEBRUARY 2015 www.ids.ac.uk
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IDS Policy Briefings are published by the Institute of Development Studies and aim to provide high quality 
analysis and practical recommendations for policymakers on important development issues. 
To subscribe: www.ids.ac.uk/idspolicybriefings
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Further reading
Calhoun, K. (2014) Exploring 
Digital Libraries: Foundations, 
Practice, Prospects, London: 
Facet
Castells, M. (2010) The Rise of the 
Network Society, Chichester: 
Wiley-Blackwell
Gregson, J.; Brownlee, J.; 
Playforth, R. and Bimbe, N. 
(2015, forthcoming) The Future of 
Knowledge Sharing in a Digital 
Age: Exploring Impacts and Policy 
Implications for Development, IDS 
Evidence Report, Brighton: IDS
Smith, M. and Reilly, K. (2013) 
Open Development: Networked 
Innovations in International 
Development, Ottawa ON: 
International Development 
Research Centre/MIT Press
Credits
This IDS Policy Briefing was 
written by Nason Bimbe, John 
Brownlee, Jon Gregson and 
Rachel Playforth. It was 
produced as part of the IDS 
Policy Anticipation, Response 
and Evaluation programme, 
supported by UK aid from the 
UK Department for International 
Development
The opinions expressed are 
those of the author and do not 
necessarily reflect the views of 
IDS or the UK government’s 
official policies. 
Readers are encouraged to 
quote and reproduce material 
from issues of IDS Policy Briefings 
in their own publication. IDS 
requests due acknowledgement 
and quotes to be referenced as 
above.
AG Level 2 Output ID: 258
© Institute of Development Studies, 2015 
ISSN 1479-974X


Knowledge Sharing and Development in a Digital Age

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Knowledge Sharing and Development in a Digital Age

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