Lamenting the fact that the global growth rate at just over 3 per cent is the lowest since the turn of the century when an average of nearly 4 per cent prevailed till COVID pandemic, the G20 Troika of Brazil, India and South Africa on Wednesday observed that accelerating progress towards sustainable development goals (SDGs) requires inclusive digital transformation.

”Technology (also) is moving at dizzying pace, and if equitably deployed, affords us a historic opportunity to raise growth, reduce inequality and take one giant step towards bridging the gap in attaining the SDGs, three countries said in a joint communique, endorsed by several G20 countries, guest countries and international organisations which participated in the G20 Summit in Brazil.

The G20 Troika said the experiences of several G20 countries have demonstrated that well-designed digital public infrastructure (DPI) augmented by artificial intelligence (AI) can enable the use of data for development, creating new jobs and delivering better health and education outcomes.

Their adoption by G20 countries more widely has the potential to radically transform the lives of citizens thereby renewing their faith in vibrant democratic principles. ”In this context, we recall the adoption of the Global Digital Compact at the UN Summit of the Future. We also welcome the Global DPI Summit held in Cairo, Egypt in 2024,” they said.

The three countries said the benefits of growth with job creation can only be unlocked when technological systems focus on each citizen, enabling small and large businesses to connect to them to improve the livelihood of families and neighbourhoods.

This happens when such systems are inclusive, development-oriented, secure and designed to respect the privacy of individuals. In the marketplace, systems that follow common design principles – like open, modular, interoperable and scalable – enable the private sector serving diverse sectors such as ecommerce, health, education and finance to connect to the technological system and to each other. Over time, as the population grows and when national needs change, the systems adapt seamlessly, they observed.

A seamless transition of technology over time requires pursuing a technology neutral approach to create a level-playing field for market participants and for the deployment and proliferation of DPI, AI and data for development. This approach is conducive to supporting greater competition and innovation, and towards stimulating wider economic development and reducing asymmetries in the digital economy, the three countries noted.

Key to this deployment is the establishment of fair and equitable principles for data governance to address data protection and management, privacy and security while offering market participants the protection of intellectual property rights and their confidential information, they said.

Trust is the cornerstone of most flourishing democracies and it is no different for technological systems. Building public trust in these systems requires transparency in operation, appropriate safeguards to respect rights of citizens, and fairness in their governance. For this reason, foundation and frontier AI models that have been trained on diverse and properly representative data sets to be cognizant of the diversity of language and culture are essential so that they benefit diverse societies across the globe, the G20 Troika said in the communique.