With the world lagging behind milestones for the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, new partnerships are forming to accelerate progress. “And for us, digital technology is really one of those big accelerants that we look at,” said Robert Opp, chief digital officer at the U.N. Development Programme.
UNDP is working with the EDISON Alliance — a global initiative that brings together leaders from the private sector, civil society, and governments — to reach 1 billion people through digital health, education, and financial services by 2025 and to support worldwide access to digital technologies for everybody.
“As a U.N. agency, we can provide a certain amount of support for our country partners and our civil society partners around the world,” Opp said. “But we know, particularly when it comes to digital technology, we cannot do that without partnership and participation from stakeholders like private sector companies. … The EDISON Alliance is really a platform that brings those voices together and tries to channel and organize the responses and commitments that we've all made in ways that will unlock and amplify what we all do.”
The Alliance recently announced it’s already halfway to achieving its goal of improving one billion lives by 2023 through digital solutions. The connections being made between organizations through the platform have played a critical part in that progress, according to Opp.
Speaking to Devex, Opp elaborated on how UNDP’s work intersects with that of the EDISON Alliance, the power of partnership in overcoming some of the key barriers to digital inclusion, and the main impacts of the Alliance and its 1 Billion Lives Challenge to date.
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