Best practices

A curated experience to discover the best practices in the digital inclusion landscape, through Case Studies, Publications, and Data & Tools. 

Case studies

UNICEF's Ed Tech Hub provides an overview of educational levels and current challenges in the LAC region, followed by an exploration of regional digital learning use. In addition they explore six digital learning platforms or tools by analysing them as case studies.
Brazil, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Nicaragua, Peru, Guatemala, El Salvador, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Argentina | Education
Mapping and Analysing Digital Learning Platforms in Latin America and the Caribbean
United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF)
This Case Study addresses the high youth unemployment rates in Jordan. They are reaching an unprecedented 48% and women’s labour force participation is at 14%, one of the lowest in the world. Digital Opportunity Trust Jordan (DOT Jordan) created the Digital Skills Programme to bridge the digital divide and enhance young women and men’s employability, digital engagement, and reach the most vulnerable and unserved in the country.
Jordan | Education
Preparing youth for the future of work with digital skills
Digital Opportunity Trust (DOT)
This case study highlights the challenge of realizing meaningful learning experiences for all children in inclusive education settings and highlights the importance of assistive technology.
Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda | Education
Accessible Digital Textbooks Case Study for Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda
United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF)
The use of digital tools for all kinds of errands and procedures, such as payments, purchases, or the use of applications, is spreading rapidly and takes up an important part of our daily lives. When due to the COVID-19 pandemic, in many places, we were forced to avoid non-essential outings, and banks and public offices reduced their customer service, many of us were able to adapt smoothly. However, this was not true for everyone. We conducted a pilot to test a grassroots innovation searching for alternatives to solve this problem. In collaboration with the municipality of Concepción del Uruguay, we designed and implemented the Con Vos Network. The Network consisted of thirty-two stores of different kinds, most of them located between 1.5 and 2 km from the city center, where neighbors could carry out digital procedures at very low cost with the help of store owners. The Network’s main objectives are to promote digital inclusion, understood as the possibility for people to go online with more things, to achieve greater decentralization of digital procedures, and to boost community markets. To assess the results of the pilot we measured the number of procedures conducted and gathered relevant information about each customer’s profile and their reasons for using the Network. The Network is a model that can be replicated in other territories as well and was highlighted as an example of Community-Organized initiatives in Smart cities by the Handbook of Urban Innovations of UNDP.
Argentina | Financial services
With a little help from my neighbors
United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)
This case study describes Singpass, Singapore’s national digital identity (NDI), and API Exchange (APEX), the government’s data sharing platform. It highlights not just how they work but also how they work together. Built by the Government Technology Agency of Singapore (GovTech), both products have helped to improving the lives of Singaporeans and residents, and to enabling government agencies and businesses to offer better services. This has contributed greatly to Singapore becoming a leading digital government, economy, and society, which are the three pillars of its Smart Nation Initiative.
Singapore | IT and Communications (ICT)
National Digital Identity and Government Data Sharing in Singapore: A Case Study of Singpass and APEX
World Bank Group
Ping Money is a UK-licensed remittance provider and fintech firm that offers a simple service for users to digitally send money to The Gambia in real time.  Ping Money also offers cross–border top-ups for mobile airtime and bill payment services for electric utility service providers. UNCDF has recently partnered with Ping Money to formalize remittances and expand access to payments and financial services in the Gambia, particularly for women and youth. The collaboration will also support Ping Money in adapting, piloting and scaling its digital wallet service, a platform that enables customers to receive remittances and safely store funds digitally and that will offer many Gambians their first opportunity to access formal financial channels.
Gambia | Financial services
Access to and Usage of Digital Remittances: A Case Study of Ping Money in The Gambia
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)
African Storybook (ASb) is a multilingual literacy project that works with educators and authors to create and publish openly licensed storybooks for early reading in African languages, making it a Digital Public Good (DPG). The initiative was launched in 2014 to address the need for accessible storybooks and improved literacy. It is an initiative of Saide, a registered non-profit organization governed by a trust and based in Johannesburg, South Africa. The project has a website that provides free access to readings with several mobile and desktop applications for reading, enabling offline reading and storybook creation. The website allows one to read, create, download, translate and adapt storybooks.
South Africa | Education
African Storybook
Universidad de Guadalajara
This article examines the growing influence of Informational Communication Technologies (ICTs) in less certain refugee contexts and the role of civil society groups. Drawing on an empirical case study of Somali refugees in Kenya, the article explores the grassroots use of ICTs by refugee women and local socio-economic dynamics in processes of inclusion. Adopting a micro-institutional perspective, the discussion looks at the emerging influence of mobile technology on refugee women’s precarious norms related to mobility and work, and the evolution of new digital norms. The article highlights the strategic role of women’s groups and proactive group members as ‘institutional entrepreneurs’, in aiding levels of ICT adoption among group members, motivated by connection, protection and collective enterprise, with potential effects far beyond the group. In a transitory and fragile refugee context however, constraints on civil society may lead to the exclusion of more isolated populations without formal institutional support.
IT and Communications (ICT)
An institutional perspective to bridging the divide: The case of Somali women refugees fostering digital inclusion in the volatile context of urban Kenya
A partnership from civil society and private sector came along with a public educational model. This case study shows how It provides high school and secondary school students from underserved communities with the academic, technical, and professional skills and credentials they need for competitive STEM jobs. The model combines coursework with workplace experiences like industry mentoring, worksite visits, traineeships and first–in–line for job considerations with a school’s company partner.
USA | Education
An open education model for underserved students to be career-ready
European Software Skills Alliance
The report aims to illustrate how innovation integrated within a project, funded by the Rapid Financing Facility (RFF), on digital government transformation. The process results in the initiation of an incubation programme as an overarching framework to incorporate new ways of working. RFF is the first collaboration between the Governance and Participation Unit and the Accelerator Lab from UNDP in Viet Nam, partnering with the Center for Public Administration from Thua Thien Hue.
Viet Nam | IT and Communications (ICT)
Applying Innovation in Digital Government Transformation (RFF): Incubation Programme Report
United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)
The digital divide is the gap between people who have easy access to the benefits of digital technology and those who don’t. That gap is not new, but the pandemic widened it, when online access to services became even more important. In Wales, 7% of the population aged 16 and over are not online (at around 180,000 people), that’s a higher percentage than the rest of the UK. To tackle this issue, the Centre for Digital Public Services (CDPS) is improving the development of a directory of organisations to improve the digital skills for many who are already disadvantaged.
United Kingdom | Education
Bridging the digital divide in Wales
Centre for Digital Public Services (CDPS) of the Welsh Government
O2 and Hubbub launched the Community Calling campaign in Leeds in January 2021. The campaign gifts smartphones with free data, calls and texts to digitally excluded people. 100% Digital Leeds worked closely with Hubbub to coordinate the distribution of phones through our networks of community partners across the city. As well as working collaboratively with our partners in Leeds, we also worked with colleagues in the region to distribute phones across West Yorkshire.
United Kingdom | IT and Communications (ICT)
Community Calling Case Study
Digital technology provides an opportunity to reach the approximately 1.7 billion adults worldwide who remain unbanked. Digital financial services (DFS) can make a valuable contribution to the economic growth of a country. Digital financial inclusion (DFI) is key to the attainment of most of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Notably, DFI is pivotal for the achievement of SDG 5, on the economic empowerment of women and Gender Equality, as it promises to extend financial access to the 35 per cent of women globally – nearly 980 million – who remain excluded from the formal financial system. Digital financial services have also provided a viable strategy in the context of the coronavirus disease pandemic given the challenges created by the pandemic and the associated risks that threaten to expand existing digital and gender gaps. This report presents findings from a country assessment undertaken to facilitate digital financial inclusion in Ethiopia and gives an overview of the current DFS landscape in the country and how it was included and implemented into its National Financial Inclusion Strategy (NFIS). It also identifies some of the barriers to DFI and suggests how they might be removed.
Ethiopia | Financial services
Country assessment to facilitate digital financial inclusion in Ethiopia
International Telecommunication Union (ITU)
In Honduras, nearly 25,000 schools have been closed since 2020. This has represented a challenge for a country where only 16.6% of the population has internet access at home. Only 12.8% of the population access this service from a computer, while 87.2% do so from a cell phone. Also, about 70% of Honduran teachers expressed the need to strengthen their digital knowledge and skills to teach in online learning environments. To tackle these challenges, ISTE (the International Society for Technology in Education) partnered with IDB to distribute a free online professional development program to a group of educators from the Ministry of Education in Honduras. These educators are part of the National Program for Digital Educational Transformation (PNTED) in four provinces of the country (Cortés, Francisco Morazán, Intibucá and Lempira) and decided to take the program voluntarily.
Education
Creating Effective Online Education Experiences in Honduras
The Ministry of Communication and Information Technology of Indonesia’s most recent initiative is the Digital Technology 4.0 Adoption Programme for Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs). The programme consists in a starter kit in the form of a data package that will be provided for 30,000 MSMEs for 6 months, equipped with a learning management system and a Point of Sales (PoS) system aggregator application. The Minister of Communication and Information explained that this programme is a more intensive version of the MSME go digital or digital onboarding programme. Through this sustainable assistance facility, it is hoped that MSMEs in the manufacturing sector will be able to increase their access to marketing, income, the competitiveness of innovation, as well as the efficiency and effectiveness of their business operations, allowing them to advance to class and contribute more to the economy, particularly during the post-pandemic economic recovery.
India | Financial services
Digital Trading, MSMEs Boost Indonesia’s Digital Economy
OpenGov Asia
The increasing prevalence and multimorbidity associated with chronic diseases are a major challenge for healthcare systems – impacting the health of people globally, but also posing challenges from a workforce perspective due to the enormous financial burden and staffing challenges it poses. Many individuals could effectively self-manage their condition in the community with the right support. Understanding user perspectives on digital health is critical to appropriate intervention design and implementation. Knowledge of these factors is a useful resource for implementers, researchers and healthcare providers to match interventions as solutions to specific problems. Recent systematic reviews of patient satisfaction have shown that digital health is an acceptable modality for care delivery; however, a variety of factors exist that affect patient satisfaction, such as ease of use or cost of the intervention. This umbrella review aimed to draw out universal themes to understand how people with chronic conditions experience digital health services, programmes, and interventions, and consequently better inform future digital delivery.
Health
Digital health experiences reported in chronic disease management: An umbrella review of qualitative studies
Wide variability in language development is present from very early in life, as early as eight months. Early experiences are among the most important predictors of language development, along with maternal education. Research has found that parental interventions that target caregiver's responsiveness and communication patterns are effective in changing parental behavior and promoting language development, with some reports of long-term effects on academic achievement and economic outcomes in adulthood. However, these programs are, in many cases, resource-intensive and difficult to scale up. In this article, we evaluate the effects of a low-cost e-messaging intervention directed at parents with children below the age of 2 on the caregiver–child dyad communication patterns. The Crianza Positiva e-messaging intervention consists of a series of text and audio messages delivered to the mobile phones of families three times a week for a period of six months.
Education
Effect of Crianza Positiva e-messaging program on adult–child language interactions
Hypertension is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality, affecting 121.5 million adults with more than 20 years in the United States. The American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association 2017 Hypertension Guidelines recommend that patients with elevated systolic blood pressure (BP) and hypertension undergo lifestyle modification. Evidence from prior studies have demonstrated that weight loss, healthy dietary patterns and increased physical activity lower BP. In this context, we conducted a randomized controlled trial comparing the effect of 2 strategies (minimal remote nonclinical staff support versus remote dietitian support with motivational interviewing), both using online programs and mobile applications to promote healthy behavior change, on 12‐week changes in 24‐hour systolic BP and other measures of healthy lifestyle. We hypothesized that the dietitian‐led approach would result in a greater decrease in 24‐hour systolic BP compared with the minimal‐support arm.
Health
Effects of a Dietitian‐Led, Telehealth Lifestyle Intervention on Blood Pressure: Results of a Randomized, Controlled Trial
In Iraq, despite school enrolment is higher today both at primary and secondary levels than one decade ago, significant differences remain in the education opportunities for female and male students. School is mandatory up to the age of twelve and the literacy rate for female and male youth is almost the same, with a 92.10 rate for females, and 94.90 rate for males. However, this data does not always account for stark regional differences within the country and for structural, social, and cultural barriers that prevent girls from fully and equally accessing and completing their education. To address this issue, Mercy Hands for Humanitarian Aid, in partnership with Mercy Hands Europe and with the support of the Canadian Fund for Local Initiatives has implemented the innovative “Boosting the technology skills of girls in Basra, Iraq, through IT/coding classes” project in Basra, Shatt Al Arab District, benefiting both schoolgirls and teachers.
Iraq | Education
Empowering girls through IT and Coding education in Iraq: an innovative learning pathway for secondary school girls in Shatt Al-Arab, Basra
ReliefWeb
The HELGO project is supporting children from exceptionally underprivileged backgrounds – often former child laborers. Their mission is to break the vicious cycle between poverty and lack of education. To achieve this, HELGO developed a holistic support program: They enroll kids in school, organize tuition classes, maintain close relationships with the families, provide materials and help them develop life skills through counseling and workshops. The program uses a Digital Public Good (DPG) call Aam Digital, a cloud-based & easy-to-use software used as a digital case management system for them to make all this information easy to manage.
India | Education
Enabling holistic education at HELGO

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