Foreword, World Economic Forum White Paper: EDISON Alliance Impact Report, January 2024
In a world where basic life services such as education, banking or healthcare have rapidly moved online, being able to access and thrive in the digital realm has become an absolute necessity. While significant strides have been made in recent years (we connected 800 million new internet users around the world during the COVID-19 pandemic), 2.6 billion people remain offline. This digital divide cannot be allowed to persist. Everybody, no matter where they were born or where they live, should have access to the 21st century’s infrastructure.
To meet this challenge, we formed the EDISON Alliance in January 2021, bringing together leaders from the private sector, governments and civil society to finally bridge the digital divide. Recognizing that no one can tackle these challenges alone, the EDISON Alliance cultivates collaboration to turn vision into action through partnerships that drive local impacts towards global scale.
The alliance set an ambitious goal to improve the lives of 1 billion people through affordable and accessible digital services by 2025. For its part, Verizon has committed to providing digital skills training to 10 million young people and to bring resources to 1 million small businesses working for success in the digital economy. Combined with the efforts of our partners, we have made great progress in two years and have identified affordability, accessibility and usability as barriers we must address to connect everybody.
With this second edition of the EDISON Alliance Impact Report, we are proud to present examples of initiatives and partnerships catalysed through the alliance that are improving the lives and livelihoods of underserved individuals and communities around the world.
We must avoid complacency. As we approach the midpoint of the world’s Sustainable Development Agenda, the world is behind on many counts and risks sliding backwards on others. In that regard, we hope the success stories presented in this report will encourage leaders to step up their individual and collective commitments towards achieving universal digital inclusion as a critical enabler of the Sustainable Development Goals.
On behalf of the EDISON Alliance Board, which includes Apollo Hospitals, Mastercard, Vista Equity Partners, the Government of Rwanda, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and Verizon, we invite you to join us on this critical mission to ensure every person is able to reach their full potential through digital.
With: Hans Vestberg, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Verizon; Chairman, EDISON Alliance
