About Digital Inclusion

UNICEF’s Digital Inclusion team advises, advocates and acts so that children are neither excluded from nor left behind in the digital world. Together with governments, technology partners, development finance institutions and the private sector, we work to accelerate access to affordable, sustainable, safe and resilient digital infrastructure for every child. This strengthens the public services children rely on across education, health, protection and emergency response, while creating opportunity in the digital economy. As artificial intelligence reshapes economies, public services and opportunity, ensuring equitable access to connectivity, computing capacity and digital infrastructure becomes increasingly important so that children can participate safely and benefit from these transformations.

How Digital Inclusion works

The Digital Inclusion team works with governments to tailor integrated packages of open-source solutions, technical assistance and advisory services to their digital transformation ambitions, resources, ecosystem readiness and timing. Our package combines in-country support in 190 countries and territories, with mapping and real-time monitoring, finance and sustainable business models, market shaping and procurement, ecosystem development, and evidence. Together, these capabilities enable governments to plan, build, own, manage and sustain digital infrastructure at scale, delivering reliable and equitable digital public services for children. They also strengthen markets for technology providers, from multinational companies to local small and medium-sized enterprises.

Giga, the joint UNICEF and ITU initiative to connect every school in the world by 2030, shows how such an approach has advanced school connectivity. Giga has mapped 2.3 million school locations. As of end 2025, UNICEF estimates that 20 million children in 44,000 schools benefited from new or improved connectivity, with more than 37 million children who attended schools that reported real-time connectivity data. 

In the systems children rely on to survive, thrive and fulfil their potential, we work towards universal connectivity and universal basic compute. Equitable access to affordable, sustainable, safe and resilient computing capacity and digital infrastructure is essential if the digital foundations shaping the future are to expand every child’s access to information, opportunity, choice and dignity.