The 2024 Global Digital Development Forum is celebrating its 5th anniversary since being re-configured due to COVID-19. Each year, the digital development community comes together in new and more thoughtful ways to surface challenges, discuss solutions, and forge partnerships that drive innovation.
Organized by USAID, Chemonics, IBM, DAI, and TechChange around major themes important to international development, the 2024 edition of GDDF will take a deeper dive into hybrid programming. This marks a significant evolution from the first Forum in 2020 that took place entirely virtually - a format inspired by the ICTworks post, Coronavirus Canceled Your Conference – Let’s Organize a Virtual Event. That post led to a vibrant discussion on how we could develop a virtual ICT4D conference that built on previous USAID Digital Development Forums in Ghana, India, El Salvador, Zambia, and the United States.
Introducing the virtual conference modality expanded both the focus and participation beyond any specific donor or country, to include a global audience of LMIC practitioners that now stretches far beyond major implementers and includes hundreds of local actors.
At this year’s two-day hybrid forum, with global events online, and in-person events in DC as well as cities worldwide, we will continue our tradition of engaging sessions to connect government stakeholders, technologists, researchers, funders, implementers, and private sector firms from across the globe.
