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Acknowledgments
This Report was prepared by a team led by Deepak Mishra and Uwe Deichmann and comprising
Kenneth Chomitz, Zahid Hasnain, Emily Kayser, Tim Kelly, Märt Kivine, Bradley
Larson, Sebastian Monroy-Taborda, Hania Sahnoun, Indhira Santos, David Satola, Marc
Schiffbauer, Boo Kang Seol, Shawn Tan, and Desiree van Welsum. The work was carried out
under the general direction of Kaushik Basu, Indermit Gill, and Pierre Guislain. World Bank
President Jim Yong Kim was an invaluable source of encouragement to the team.
The team received guidance from an Advisory Panel cochaired by Kaushik Basu and
Toomas Hendrik Ilves and consisting of Salim Sultan Al-Ruzaiqi, Carl Bildt, Yessica Cartajena,
Dorothy Gordon, Richard Heeks, Monica Kerretts-Makau, Feng Lu, N.R. Narayana
Murthy, Paul Romer, and Hal Varian.
The team would like to acknowledge the generous support of Canada’s Department of
Foreign Affairs, Trade, and Development and the International Development Research Centre;
Estonia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Office of the President; the French Development
Agency; Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development and
the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit; Israel’s Ministry of Economy;
Norway’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Norwegian Agency for Development
Cooperation; Sweden’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs; the multidonor Knowledge for Change
Program; and the World Bank Research Support Budget.
Consultation events were held in Armenia, Belgium, China, the Dominican Republic,
the Arab Republic of Egypt, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Ireland,
Jamaica, Kenya, Morocco, the Netherlands, Oman, Pakistan, the Philippines, Somalia, Sweden,
Switzerland, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, the United States,
and Vietnam, with participants drawn from many more countries. Detailed information
about these events can be found at http://www.worldbank.org/wdr2016/about. Interagency
consultations were held with the European Commission, International Telecommunication
Union, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, United Nations Broadband
Commission, United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), and
United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). The initial findings of the Report were
also discussed at several conferences and workshops, including at the Brookings-Blum
Roundtable; Columbia University; Nairobi’s iHub; International Conference of Agricultural
Economists in Milan; Oxford Internet Institute; the People-Centered Internet Conference at
Stanford University; the Science, Technology and Innovation for Development conference
in Seoul; the Swedish Program for Information and Communication Technology in Developing
Regions; the UbuntuNet Alliance Connect Conference in Mozambique; the University
of West Indies at Mona, Jamaica; the U.S. State Department; the World Economic Forum;
and the World Summit on the Information Society. The team thanks the participants in all
of these events for helpful comments and suggestions.
Bruce Ross-Larson was the principal editor of the Report. The production and logistics
team for the Report comprised Brónagh Murphy, Mihaela Stangu, and Jason Victor, with
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