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This paper sets out the key challenges that digital solutions could address, provides a skeleton theory of change for how digital solutions can address the challenge of poor urban infrastructure, and then explores the four key opportunities that developing country governments and donors must consider if they wish to make their urban areas centres of […]

At a time when the transition commonly referred to as the fourth industrial revolution is gaining pace, it is important for donors to understand developing economies’ capacities to build and leverage digital. We created this benchmarking tool to support DFID program managers better understand the different topics that are critical towards building a digital economy.

In July, the ICED team delivered a series of quarterly lessons learnt workshops at DFID’s offices in Whitehall and remotely. These workshops presented recent lessons learnt from across the ICED facility’s work, including from our urban, economic development, infrastructure, and FCAS portfolios.

The effective planning and delivery of vital infrastructure is central to realising the full economic potential of cities to drive growth and development. In Nairobi, improvements to the operation and safety of the rail network were impeded by large scale occupation of land along railway lines through the Mukuru and Kibera informal settlements. In 2006, […]

Whilst digital solutions on their own cannot provide a silver bullet to youth unemployment, when viewed as part of a suite of approaches to tackling this issue, digital-focused interventions also have great potential to support the development of a vibrant, valuable youth workforce. Such interventions should be complemented by support in areas such as education […]

There are growing opportunities to utilise digital solutions to solve urban service delivery challenges. Opportunities  include the potential to better plan services for citizens, improving the value for money of LGAs investments an leveraging private sector support. In 2017 the ICED programme developed a positioning paper ‘Urbanisation in a Digital World’, reviewed the potential for […]

Despite being the largest economy in Africa, Nigeria is severely constrained by low quality, decaying infrastructure and inadequate power supply. Responding to these constraints DFID established the Nigeria Infrastructure Advisory Facility (NIAF), a demand driven technical assistance programme to support more Phase 1 ran from November 2007 to November 2011 (£32.6 million). NIAF II continued […]

Traditionally, donor programmes have been established using a simple formula, whereby SPs estimate the total overhead for a programme through tender, against a fixed set of inputs and workplan. In these programmes, clients need to wait months or years before assistance is deployed due to procurement procedures, by which time resource allocation, costs, and plans […]