Development
- Facebook has launched the My Digital World, a project designed to equip the youth and general public across sub-Saharan Africa with digital skills.
- Pakistan has set up the Digital Victim Support Directory which provides child victims of violence, harassment, and abuse with information on finding support.
Food security
- Liquid Telecom partnered with Kenya’s Twiga Foods to deploy Internet of Things (IoT) technologies, such as sensors for measuring soil moisture to improve precision farming.
- The Microsoft for Agritech Startups programme launched to assist Indian start-ups in developing agritech solutions.
- The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has set up the Food Systems Dashboard to help national decision makers learn about and compare food systems across the world.
Gender equality
- The Connected Women and European Union – United Nations Women have partnered to assist female entrepreneurs in the Philippines to develop digital platform skills.
Climate action
- Following the publication of a Greenpeace report, Google announced that it will stop producing AI tools for the oil and gas industry.
Migration
- The International Organization for Migration (IOM) has launched the Data Innovation Directory (DID), a data platform intended to help monitor migration trends in times of crisis.
Humanitarian
- Wingcopter has partnered with the African Drone and Data Academy (ADDA) to boost humanitarian health-supply chains.
- The German Aerospace Centre (DLR) has initiated the Data4Human project that aims to help humanitarian organisations quickly communicate the information they require.
Water management
- The Communications, Advocacy and Policy Opportunities and Outreach for Poop (CAOOP) launched an online resource-sharing platform for actors in the water, hygiene, and sanitation industry of Africa.
Digital health
- Babylon Health, an mHealth app, has confirmed a data breach of its video consultations with patients.
COVID-19 has shed light on digital health and the use of technologies for predicting and preventing pandemics. However, the industry is much more versatile.
According to data from 2020, telemedicine received an estimated USD$1.76 billion of investment worldwide, making it the most funded digital health category in 2019. mHealth apps have received around USD$1.23 billion. While reports show that the digital health market was worth USD$106 billion in 2019, predictions indicate that its value will amount to USD$639.4 billion by 2026. Consult our latest trend updates to learn about the technological and policy implications of digital health.