DEVELOPMENT

4 The Afd2025 scenarios
Foresighting for Development
Development agencies, steering through future worlds. Afd2025
I
...
The use of Big Data has propelled the success of companies such as Amazon, Google,
Apple, Facebook, IBM, etc., but using it for development and public policy purposes is
still nascent. These technologies hold the promise of more precise targeting for development
policies. Official statistics could also leverage this type of data to produce more
precise indicators, more frequently and at a lesser cost. Produced in a decentralized
manner often by external actors, these data could also promote greater accountability
towards citizens. Yet, Big Data can also pose a serious threat (non-respect of privacy,
abusive surveillance). There is a need for a sound regulatory and institutional framework
and new skills that are currently in short supply. Moreover, the firms that control big
data technology are becoming key actors on many fronts, including development.
Finally, the obsession with metrics should not obviate the need for discussion, or
take away our appetite for thinking and projecting ourselves into the long term
or exploring grey areas where quantitative data are lacking.
These diverse scales of governance are gradually challenging the concept of “nation-state”.
As a result, certain issues (e.g. sustainable production/consumption) are no longer necessarily
managed at a territorial level, but by networks of actors. The new dividing lines
separating these networks (those with sustainable practices from those without) are being
drawn up and triggering a sort of “race to the top.”
A great many actors, worn down by repeated conflicts and crises, are all asking for efforts
towards peace, security and stability. Highly diverse and even improbable coalitions of
actors become thought leaders and beacons of best practice, outstripping governmental
and religious actors, and contribute to the growing secularization of societies. They are
backed by China, which has a manifest will to influence these efforts at an international
scale, as it sees them as stabilizing factors. Several OECD member countries help to
reinforce this trend.
44