Digital Development in 2025: Ten Moments to Watch
January 15, 2025

Author
Megan Roberts
Positioning and Engagement Specialist, Chief Digital Office, UNDP
Digital technologies are playing a crucial role in sustainable development. From AI-enabled health and education tools to digital public infrastructure, they are helping to unlock innovation and improve public service delivery.
As digital technologies have become more central to nearly every aspect of life, they have also leapt to the top of policy agendas around the world. This year promises an even busier schedule as policymakers work to forge new commitments and partnerships to ensure digital technologies, including AI, contribute to a more inclusive and sustainable future.
2025 will be a year of several important milestones, including the five-year countdown to 2030, the ‘due date’ for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and the twentieth anniversary of the World Summit on the Information Society. Events this year will also work to drive progress on implementing the Global Digital Compact (GDC), agreed last year as part of the UN’s Pact for the Future.
Besides driving global dialogues on digital development, events this year also offer the opportunity to learn from country experiences on digital transformation and unlock progress at the country level.
Here are ten high-level events on digital development to watch in 2025.
1. Paris AI Action Summit
10-11 February 2025
Paris, France
In February, Paris will host the AI Action Summit, bringing together leaders from government, international organization, the private sector, civil society, academia and others to deliver commitments to ensure AI supports social, economic and environmental progress. Building on AI safety summits held in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Korea, the AI Action Summit aims to broaden the AI discussion across five themes, namely public interest AI, the future of work, innovation and culture, trust in AI, and global governance of AI. Delivering meaningful action and new commitments requires an inclusive approach, so France has developed a series of events 'on the road to the summit’ to crowd in insights and new proposals. One workshop in 2024 put forward a series of recommendations on how the summit can ensure equity and sustainability in AI development and governance, particularly for the Global Majority.
2. World Bank Global Digital Summit
17-20 March 2025
Washington DC, USA
Held under the theme ‘digital pathways for all,’ the World Bank’s second Global Digital Summit will take place as the World Bank deepens its work on digital development. Last year, the World Bank unveiled a new scorecard for measuring the its impact that includes two digital indicators, and launched a Global Challenge Program to accelerate digitalization, one of six key development challenges as identified by the World Bank. To lead these efforts, World Bank President Ajay Banga appointed the institution’s first vice-president of digital transformation. Looking forward, the World Bank is poised to bring more financial support to digital transformation, with the recent conclusion of the IDA21 replenishment, which includes digital as one of five focus areas and saw a record $100 billion raised for the world’s poorest countries. The Global Digital Summit will bring together leaders across sectors for discussions on the transformative power of digital technologies for development.
3. Global AI Summit on Africa
3-4 April 2025
Kigali, Rwanda
Hosted by the Rwandan Ministry of ICT and Innovation and the Rwanda Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the inaugural Global AI Summit on Africa will focus on how AI can be harnessed in Africa to create inclusive economic opportunities. The summit comes at a crucial moment; each week brings news of novel AI breakthroughs, yet the development and use of AI remains highly concentrated in a small number of countries. For instance, only five percent of AI innovators in Africa have access to the compute power they require. There is a risk that a growing AI divide will further exacerbate global digital divides, putting further at risk the global commitment of the Sustainable Development Goals, to leave no one behind. The summit will be an opportunity to build on important progress in 2024 to realize an inclusive AI future.
4. Hamburg Sustainability Conference
2-3 June 2025
Hamburg, Germany
A joint initiative of the German Federal Government, the Michael Otto Foundation, the city of Hamburg, and UNDP, the Hamburg Sustainability Conference (HSC) brings together leaders across sectors to build new partnerships and scale solutions to support sustainable development.
The first HSC was held in 2024 and included a strong focus on responsible AI and digitalization, including the launch of joint principles on responsible AI and the AI SDG Compendium (a global repository of AI initiatives that support sustainable development). This year’s HSC will build on this progress with the agreement of a Declaration on Responsible AI for the SDGs, a multistakeholder vision of how responsible AI can drive better development outcomes.
5. WSIS+20 High-Level Event
7-11 July 2025
Geneva, Switzerland
This year marks the twentieth anniversary of the World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) held across two landmark meetings in 2003 in Geneva and 2005 in Tunis. Across the two events, leaders from all regions and sectors agreed to the WSIS outcomes, a vision for an inclusive digital future in which individuals are empowered and sustainable development is fostered. The WSIS+20 High-Level Event, hosted by ITU and co-organized by ITU, UNESCO, UNDP, and UNCTAD will bring together governments, civil society, the private sector, the technical community, and others to review progress, challenges and opportunities over the last twenty years in advance of a high-level UN General Assembly meeting later this year.
During the same week in Geneva, ITU will host the AI for Good Global Summit together with 40 UN agencies and co-convened with the government of Switzerland. The AI for Good Global Summit works to identify AI solutions, support skills and standards, and advance AI governance all for sustainable development. Later the same month, Norway will host the 20th Internet Governance Forum, a key outcome of the WSIS process.

WSIS+20 Forum High-Level Event 2024
6. UN General Assembly High-Level Week and SDG Digital
High-level General Debate begins 23 September 2025
New York, United States
This year’s UN General Assembly high-level week marks the organization’s 80th anniversary. As in past years, digital technologies are expected to be high on the agenda of world leaders as they convene in New York. One topic of particular interest will likely be how to realize the commitments and actions adopted in the Global Digital Compact, one annex to the Pact of the Future agreed in 2024. The GDC sets out a shared vision to deliver “an inclusive, open, sustainable, fair, safe and secure digital future for all” and realizing this vision will require action from all stakeholders.
The week will also be an opportunity to identify new partnerships, models, and commitments to accelerate the SDGs. With only five years left until 2030, just 17 percent of the SDG’s 169 targets are on track for completion. Digital is one powerful accelerator of progress on the SDGs, with the potential to support 70 percent of SDG targets. SDG Digital, organized by UNDP and the International Telecommunications Union, convenes leaders from governments, civil society, the private sector, youth, and academia to realize this potential for digital technologies to support a more sustainable, inclusive, and responsible future. The third edition of SDG Digital will take place this year, building on the commitments delivered in 2023 and 2024.
7. Global Digital Public Infrastructure Summit
4-6 November 2025
Location TBD
The past several years have seen growing recognition of the fundamental role that digital public infrastructure (DPI) —including digital payments, identification, and data exchanges—can play in fostering inclusive digital transformation and delivering government services at scale. For instance, the 50-in-5 initiative, a campaign to help countries design and launch DPI, has already attracted 22 countries to join its campaign.
The first Global DPI Summit was held in Egypt last year and co-hosted by Co-Develop, the International Telecommunications Union, the UN Office for the Special Envoy on Technology, UNDP, and the World Bank. The summit brought together an emerging and growing global DPI community, representing more than 100 countries. Its outcome statement identified seven ‘big bets’ for DPI in 2025, including developing safeguards to ensure safe and inclusive DPI, increasing knowledge sharing, and adopting international standards on DPI. Expect the 2025 summit to bring in even more DPI leaders and provide the space for further progress in delivering these foundational technologies to support development.
8. 2025 UN Climate Change Conference (COP 30)
10-21 November 2025
Belém, Brazil
Fifty thousand people are expected to descend on Belém in November, as the city hosts the thirtieth UN climate conference to be held in the Amazon, the world’s largest rainforest. Among the many pressing issues participants will face is how to leverage the benefits that digital technologies can offer in reducing carbon emissions while constraining their rapidly expanding carbon footprint. Recent research gives reason for concern, particularly given the demands of energy-hungry AI. By 2030, AI is poised to drive a 160 percent increase in data center power demands.
In 2024, COP29 organized the first Digitalization Day to draw attention to the relationship between digital technologies and climate change and saw the adoption of the Declaration on Green Digital Action by 76 governments and more than 1700 non-state actors. COP30 can build on these achievements and identify pathbreaking solutions to scale.
9. G20 Summit
22-23 November 2025
Johannesburg, South Africa
South Africa will host this year’s G20 presidency, the first in Africa, under the theme ‘Solidarity, Equality, Sustainability.’ Although the G20 has its roots in global financial and economic issues, in recent years, the group has expanded its portfolio, including by delivering a series of digital-related agreements on issues such as AI, DPI, and connectivity.
South Africa intends to build on these efforts in 2025. This year, the G20 digital economy working group is expected to focus on four priorities: connectivity for inclusive digital development; digital public infrastructure and transformation; digital innovation ecosystems; and equitable, inclusive, and just AI. In addition to the work of the digital economy track, under South Africa’s leadership, the G20 will also organize a task force on AI, data governance, and innovation for sustainable development. South Africa has identified several deliverables for the task force, including an AI for Africa initiative to turbocharge implementation of the AU Continental Artificial Intelligence Strategy and a technology policy assistance facility, to support the development of national AI policies and strategies.
10. Digital Public Goods Alliance Annual Members Meeting
December
Location TBD
The Digital Public Goods Alliance (DPGA) will hold its annual members meeting, a multistakeholder convening that brings together the open-source technical community with governments, philanthropies, civil society and development actors to support the development and use of open-source digital technologies. DPGA recently unveiled a new strategy to strengthen global DPG advocacy as it also works to bring together the wider community of DPG actors.
To drive progress in 2025 and beyond, DPGA recently identified four calls for collaborative action around which the DPG ecosystem should rally:
- Be Open-Source First
- Build DPGs to improve access to Open Data
- Increase Funding for DPGs to build inclusive digital public infrastructure
- Build DPGs for Multidimensional Climate Action
The December members meeting will be an opportunity to review how actors across sectors are coming together to catalyze new DPG investments and commitments, creating better opportunities for DPGs and open source to help achieve the SDGs, and integrate with the wider DPI movement.
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