Scenarios for the Future of Technology
and International Development

This report was produced by
The Rockefeller Foundation
and Global Business Network.
May 2010

Contents
Letter from Judith Rodin. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Letter from Peter Schwartz.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
WHY SCENARIOS?.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
WHY TECHNOLOGY?.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
THE FOCAL QUESTION.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
ENGAGING YOUR IMAGINATION. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

The Scenario Framework.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
CHOOSING THE CRITICAL UNCERTAINTIES. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
GLOBAL POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ALIGNMENT. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
ADAPTIVE CAPACITY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
THE SCENARIO NARRATIVES. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

Lock Step. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Clever Together. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
Hack Attack.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
Smart Scramble.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42

Concluding Thoughts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
Appendix.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51

Letter from Judith Rodin
President of the Rockefeller Foundation

The Rockefeller Foundation supports work that expands opportunity and strengthens
resilience to social, economic, health, and environmental challenges — affirming

Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development

its pioneering philanthropic mission, since 1913, to “promote the well-being” ofhumanity. We take a synergistic, strategic approach that places a high value oninnovative processes and encourages new ways of seeking ideas, to break down silos
and encourage interdisciplinary thinking.

4

One important — and novel — component of our strategy toolkit is scenario planning,a process of creating narratives about the future based on factors likely to affect aparticular set of challenges and opportunities. We believe that scenario planning has
great potential for use in philanthropy to identify unique interventions, simulate andrehearse important decisions that could have profound implications, and highlightpreviously undiscovered areas of connection and intersection. Most important,by providing a methodological structure that helps us focus on what we don’tknow — instead of what we already know — scenario planning allows us to achieve
impact more effectively.
The results of our first scenario planning exercise demonstrate a provocative andengaging exploration of the role of technology and the future of globalization,
as you will see in the following pages. This report is crucial reading for anyone
interested in creatively considering the multiple, divergent ways in which our world
could evolve. The sparks of insight inspiring these narratives — along with theirimplications for philanthropy as a whole — were generated through the invaluable
collaboration of grantee representatives, external experts, and Rockefeller
Foundation staff. I offer a special thanks to Peter Schwartz, Andrew Blau, and theentire team at Global Business Network, who have helped guide us through thisstimulating and energizing process.

Leading this effort at the Rockefeller Foundation is our Research Unit, whichanalyzes emerging risks and opportunities and thinks imaginatively about how to
respond to the complex, rapidly changing world around us. This outward-looking
intelligence function adopts a cross-cutting mindset that synthesizes and integrates
knowledge that accelerates our ability to act more quickly and effectively. It has
also helped to shape and build the notion of “pro-poor foresight” that is committed
to applying forward-looking tools and techniques to improve the lives of poor andvulnerable populations around the world.

Judith Rodin
President
The Rockefeller Foundation

Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development

I hope this publication makes clear exactly why my colleagues and I are so excitedabout the promise of using scenario planning to develop robust strategies and offer arefreshing viewpoint on the possibilities that lie ahead. We welcome your feedback.

5

Letter from Peter Schwartz

Cofounder and Chairman of Global Business Network

We are at a moment in history that is full of opportunity. Technology is poised totransform the lives of millions of people throughout the world, especially those who

Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development

have had little or no access to the tools that can deliver sustainable improvements
for their families and communities. From farmers using mobile phones to buy andsell crops to doctors remotely monitoring and treating influenza outbreaks in ruralvillages, technology is rapidly becoming more and more integral to the pace andprogress of development.

6

Philanthropy has a unique and critical role to play in this process. By focusing its
patience, capital, and attention on the links between technology and international
development, philanthropy will change not just lives but the very context inwhich the field of philanthropy operates. This report represents an initial step inthat direction. It explores four very different — yet very possible — scenarios forthe future of technology and development in order to illuminate the challenges
and opportunities that may lie ahead. It promotes a deeper understanding of thecomplex forces and dynamics that will accelerate or inhibit the use of technology
to spur growth, opportunity, and resilience especially in the developing world.
Finally, it will seed a new strategic conversation among the key public, private, andphilanthropic stakeholders about technology and development at the policy, program,and human levels.
The Rockefeller Foundation’s use of scenario planning to explore technology andinternational development has been both inspired and ambitious. Throughout my
40-plus-year career as a scenario planner, I have worked with many of the world’s
leading companies, governments, foundations, and nonprofits — and I know firsthandthe power of the approach. Scenario planning is a powerful tool precisely because
the future is unpredictable and shaped by many interacting variables. Scenarios
enable us to think creatively and rigorously about the different ways these forces
may interact, while forcing us to challenge our own assumptions about what webelieve or hope the future will be. Scenarios embrace and weave together multiple
perspectives and provide an ongoing framework for spotting and making sense of

The Rockefeller Foundation has already used this project as an opportunity toclarify and advance the relationship between technology and development.
Through interviews and the scenario workshops, they have engaged a diverse setof people — from different geographies, disciplines, and sectors — to identify the key
forces driving change, to explore the most critical uncertainties, and to develop
challenging yet plausible scenarios and implications. They have stretched theirthinking far beyond theoretical models of technology innovation and diffusion inorder to imagine how technology could actually change the lives of people frommany walks of life. This is only the start of an important conversation that willcontinue to shape the potential of technology and international development going
forward. I look forward to staying a part of that conversation and to the better future
it will bring.

Peter Schwartz
Cofounder and Chairman
Global Business Network

Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development

important changes as they emerge. Perhaps most importantly, scenarios give us anew, shared language that deepens our conversations about the future and how we
can help to shape it.

7

Introduction
For decades, technology has been dramatically changing
not just the lives of individuals in developed countries, but
increasingly the lives and livelihoods of people throughout
the developing world. Whether it is a community mobile
phone, a solar panel, a new farming practice, or a cuttingedge medical device, technology is altering the landscape of

Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development

possibility in places where possibilities used to be scarce.

8

And yet looking out to the future, there is no
single story to be told about how technology
will continue to help shape — or evenrevolutionize — life in developing countries. There
are many possibilities, some good and some lessso, some known and some unknowable. Indeed,for everything we think we can anticipate about
how technology and international development
will interact and intertwine in the next 20 years
and beyond, there is so much more that wecannot yet even imagine.
For philanthropies as well as for otherorganizations, this presents a unique challenge:
given the uncertainty about how the future willplay out, how can we best position ourselves notjust to identify technologies that improve thelives of poor communities but also to help scaleand spread those that emerge? And how will thesocial, technological, economic, environmental,
and political conditions of the future enable orinhibit our ability to do so?
The Rockefeller Foundation believes thatin order to understand the many ways inwhich technology will impact international
development in the future, we must first broaden
and deepen our individual and collective
understanding of the range of possibilities. This
report, and the project upon which it is based,is one attempt to do that. In it, we share theoutputs and insights from a year-long project,undertaken by the Rockefeller Foundation and
Global Business Network (GBN), designed toThis report builds on the Rockefeller
Foundation’s growing body of work in theemerging field of pro-poor foresight. In 2009,
the Institute for Alternative Futures publishedthe report Foresight for Smart Globalization:
Accelerating and Enhancing Pro-Poor
Development Opportunities, with support fromthe Rockefeller Foundation. That effort was areflection of the Foundation’s strong commitment
to exploring innovative processes and embracing
new pathways for insight aimed at helping theworld’s poor. With this report, the Foundation
takes a further step in advancing the field of
pro-poor foresight, this time through the lens ofscenario planning.

WHY SCENARIOS?
The goal of this project was not to affirm what
is already known and knowable about what
is happening right now at the intersections oftechnology and development. Rather, it was toexplore the many ways in which technology
and development could co-evolve — could bothpush and inhibit each other — in the future, andthen to begin to examine what those possible
alternative paths may imply for the world’s
poor and vulnerable populations. Such an
exercise required project participants to pushtheir thinking far beyond the status quo, into
uncharted territory.
Scenario planning is a methodology designed
to help guide groups and individuals throughexactly this creative process. The process
begins by identifying forces of change in theworld, then combining those forces in different
ways to create a set of diverse stories — or
scenarios — about how the future could evolve.
Scenarios are designed to stretch our thinking
about both the opportunities and obstacles thatthe future might hold; they explore, throughnarrative, events and dynamics that mightalter, inhibit, or enhance current trends, often
in surprising ways. Together, a set of scenarios
captures a range of future possibilities,
good and bad, expected and surprising — but
always plausible. Importantly, scenarios are
not predictions. Rather, they are thoughtful
hypotheses that allow us to imagine, and then torehearse, different strategies for how to be more
prepared for the future — or more ambitiously,
how to help shape better
futures ourselves.

Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development

explore the role of technology in international
development through scenario planning, amethodology in which GBN is a long-time leader.

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Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development

WHY TECHNOLOGY?

10

Technology was chosen as a focal point of thisproject because of its potentially transformativerole — both in a positive and negative way — inaddressing a wide range of development
challenges, from climate change, healthcare,
and agriculture to housing, transportation, andeducation. Yet while there is little doubt thattechnology will continue to be a driver of change
across the developing world in the future, theprecise trajectory along which technologicalinnovation will travel is highly uncertain.
For example, will critical technologicaladvances come from the developed world, or
will innovators and their innovations be moregeographically dispersed? Or, how might the
global economic and political environment affectthe pace of technology development?
It is important to state that in focusing ontechnology, this project did not set out toidentify a set of exact, yet-to-be-invented
technologies that will help shape and change thefuture. Rather, the goal was to gain a broader
and richer understanding of different paths
along which technology could develop — paths
that will be strongly influenced by the overall
global environment in which the inventors
and adopters of those technologies will findthemselves working and dwelling. Technology,

as a category, cannot be divorced from thecontext in which it develops. The scenarios
shared in this report explore four such contexts,
each of which, as you’ll see, suggests very
different landscapes for technology and its
potential impacts in the developing world.
Finally, a note about what we mean by“technology.” In this report, we use the term torefer to a broad spectrum of tools and methods oforganization. Technologies can range from tools
for basic survival, such as a treadle pump andbasic filtration technologies, to more advanced
innovations, such as methods of collecting
and utilizing data in health informatics
and novel building materials with real-timeenvironmental sensing capabilities. This
report focuses on themes associated with thewidespread scalability, adoption, and assessmentof technology in the developing world. While
the scenarios themselves are narratives about
the global environment, we have paid particularattention to how events might transpire in subSaharan Africa, Southeast Asia, and India.

Every scenario project has a focal question —a broad yet strategic query that serves as ananchor for the scenarios. For this project, thefocal question was:How might technology affect barriers tobuilding resilience and equitable growthin the developing world over the next
15 to 20 years?
In other words, what new or existing
technologies could be leveraged to improvethe capacity of individuals, communities,
and systems to respond to major changes, orwhat technologies could improve the lives ofvulnerable populations around the world? A
15- to 20-year timeframe was chosen on theassumption that it is both sufficiently long

A Note on Terminology
The Foundation’s work promotes “resilienceand equitable growth.” Resilience refers to
the capacity of individuals, communities,
and systems to survive, adapt, and growin the face of changes, even catastrophic
incidents. Equitable growth involves enabling
individuals, communities, and institutions
to access new tools, practices, resources,
services, and products.

enough that significant technological change
is plausible and sufficiently short enough that
we can imagine some possibilities for the kindsof technologies that could be developed andapplied. Focusing on how to overcome a setof obstacles associated with the application oftechnology to the challenges of development
helped to both bound the inquiry and promote a
problem-solving approach that seeks to identify
potential, systematic intervention opportunities.

ENGAGING YOUR IMAGINATION
It is our hope that these scenarios help inspire
the same future-orientation in other initiatives
that are broadly concerned with technology andinternational development. Of course, there is no
hard data about the future — nobody yet knows
precisely what technologies will be successful ataddressing new and evolving development needs.
Rather, as you read the scenarios, think of themas a journey — four journeys — into a future thatis relevant, thought-provoking, and possible.
Imagine how the world will function and how
it will be organized to tackle the challenges it
faces. Who will be responsible for driving local
and global development initiatives and what
would that require? And what is your own rolein leading your organization, community, or
region to a preferred future?

Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development

THE FOCAL QUESTION

11

Scenarios are a medium through which greatchange can be not just envisioned but also
actualized. The more closely you read them, themore likely it becomes that you will recognize
their important but less obvious implications
to you, your work, and your community. We
strongly encourage you to share and discuss
this report widely, use it as a springboard forfurther creative thinking about how technology

could shape development, and test and adjust
your strategies or personal actions accordingly.
It is also our hope that these scenarios help
to identify potential areas of future work forgovernments, philanthropies, corporations, andnonprofits, and that they illuminate choices andcommitments that a wide range of organizations
may want to make in these areas in the future.

FURTHER READING ON TECHNOLOGY AND DEVELOPMENT

Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development

This report adds to a growing body of literature focusing on the relationship between
technology, development, and social systems. While not a comprehensive list, the following
readings offer additional insights on this topic.
• Caroline Wagner, The New Invisible College: Science for Development, 2008.
• Institute for the Future, Science and Technology Outlook: 2005-2055, 2006.
• RAND Corporation, The Global Technology Revolution 2020, In-Depth Analyses,
2006.
• World Bank, Science, Technology, and Innovation: Capacity Building for Sustainable
Growth and Poverty Reduction, 2008.
• UN Millennium Project, Task Force on Science, Technology, and Innovation,
Innovation: Applying Knowledge in Development, 2006.
• W. Brian Arthur, The Nature of Technology: What It Is and How It Evolves, 2009.

12• STEPS Centre Working Papers, Innovation, Sustainability, Development: A New
Manifesto, 2009.

The Scenario
Framework
The Rockefeller Foundation and GBN began the scenario
process by surfacing a host of driving forces thatwould affect the future of technology and international
development. These forces were generated through bothsecondary research and in-depth interviews with Foundation
staff, Foundation grantees, and external experts.
from renewable resources and may succeed, butthere will likely still be a significant level ofglobal interdependence on energy.
Predetermined elements are important toany scenario story, but they are not thefoundation on which these stories are built.
Rather, scenarios are formed around “criticaluncertainties” — driving forces that areconsidered both highly important to the focal
issue and highly uncertain in terms of their
future resolution. Whereas predeterminedelements are predictable driving forces,
uncertainties are by their nature unpredictable:
their outcome can be guessed at but not known.

Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development

Next, all these constituents came together
in several exploratory workshops to further
brainstorm the content of these forces,
which could be divided into two categories:
predetermined elements and criticaluncertainties. A good starting point for any
set of scenarios is to understand those driving
forces that we can be reasonably certain will
shape the worlds we are describing, also known
as “predetermined elements.” For example, it isa near geopolitical certainty that — with the riseof China, India, and other nations — a multi-polar
global system is emerging. One demographic
certainty is that global population growth
will continue and will put pressure on energy,
food, and water resources — especially in thedeveloping world. Another related certainty: thatthe world will strive to source more of its energy

13While any single uncertainty could challenge
our thinking, the future will be shaped bymultiple forces playing out over time. The
scenario framework provides a structured way toconsider how these critical uncertainties might

for example, the pervasiveness of conflictin the developing world; the frequency andseverity of shocks like economic and politicalcrises, disease, and natural disasters; and thelocus of innovation for crucial technologies

unfold and evolve in combination. Identifying
the two most important uncertainties guarantees
that the resulting scenarios will differ in waysthat have been judged to be critical to the
focal question.

for development. (A full list of the criticaluncertainties identified during the project, as
well as a list of project participants, can befound in the Appendix.)

Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development

CHOOSING THE CRITICALUNCERTAINTIES

14

During this project’s scenario creation workshop,
participants — who represented a range ofregional and international perspectives — selected
the two critical uncertainties that would form
the basis of the scenario framework. They
chose these two uncertainties from a longer
list of potential uncertainties that mightshape the broader contextual environment of
the scenarios, including social, technology,
economic, environmental, and political trends.
The uncertainties that were considered included,

The two chosen uncertainties, introduced
below, together define a set of four scenarios
for the future of technology and international
development that are divergent, challenging,internally consistent, and plausible. Each of thetwo uncertainties is expressed as an axis that
represents a continuum of possibilities ranging
between two endpoints.

STRONGLOW

POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ALIGNMENTWEAK

ADAPTIVE CAPACITY

HIGH

This uncertainty refers to both the amountof economic integration — the flow of goods,
capital, people, and ideas — as well as theextent to which enduring and effective
political structures enable the world to deal
with many of the global challenges it faces.
On one end of the axis, we would see a more
integrated global economy with high tradevolumes, which enables access to a wider rangeof goods and services through imports andexports, and the increasing specialization ofexports. We would also see more cooperation
at the supra-national level, fostering increased
collaboration, strengthened global institutions,and the formation of effective international
problem-solving networks. At the otheraxis endpoint, the potential for economic
development in the developing world would
be reduced by the fragility of the overall
global economy — coupled with protectionism
and fragmentation of trade — along with aweakening of governance regimes that raisebarriers to cooperation, thereby hinderingagreement on and implementation of largescale, interconnected solutions to pressing
global challenges.

ADAPTIVE CAPACITY
This uncertainty refers to the capacity at
different levels of society to cope with change
and to adapt effectively. This ability to adapt
can mean proactively managing existing
systems and structures to ensure their resilienceagainst external forces, as well as the ability
to transform those systems and structures
when a changed context means they are nolonger suitable. Adaptive capacity is generally
associated with higher levels of education ina society, as well as the availability of outlets
for those who have educations to further theirindividual and societal well-being. High levelsof adaptive capacity are typically achieved
through the existence of trust in society; thepresence and tolerance of novelty and diversity;
the strength, variety, and overlap of humaninstitutions; and the free flow of communicationand ideas, especially between and acrossdifferent levels, e.g., bottom-up and top-down.
Lower levels of adaptive capacity emerge in
the absence of these characteristics and leave
populations particularly vulnerable to thedisruptive effects of unanticipated shocks.

Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development

GLOBAL POLITICAL
AND ECONOMIC ALIGNMENT

15

Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development

Once crossed, these axes create a matrix of fourvery different futures:

16

LOCK STEP – A world of tighter top-down

HACK ATTACK – An economically

government control and more authoritarian
eadership, with limited innovation andgrowing citizen pushback

unstable and shock-prone world in whichgovernments weaken, criminals thrive,and dangerous innovations emerge

CLEVER TOGETHER – A world in which

SMART SCRAMBLE – An economicallyhighly coordinated and successful strategies
emerge for addressing both urgent andentrenched worldwide issues

depressed world in which individuals andcommunities develop localized, makeshift
solutions to a growing set of problems

The scenarios that follow are not meant to be
exhaustive — rather, they are designed to beboth plausible and provocative, to engage yourimagination while also raising new questions
for you about what that future might look andfeel like. Each scenario tells a story of how theworld, and in particular the developing world,might progress over the next 15 to 20 years,
with an emphasis on those elements relating
to the use of different technologies and theinteraction of these technologies with the livesof the poor and vulnerable. Accompanying
each scenario is a range of elements that aspire
to further illuminate life, technology, andphilanthropy in that world. These include:• A timeline of possible headlines andemblematic events unfolding during theperiod of the scenario• Short descriptions of what technologies
and technology trends we might see• Initial observations on the changing
role of philanthropy in that world,
highlighting opportunities andchallenges that philanthropic
organizations would face and what theiroperating environment might be like• A “day in the life” sketch of a person
living and working in that world

Please keep in mind that the scenarios inthis report are stories, not forecasts, andthe plausibility of a scenario does not hingeon the occurrence of any particular detail.
In the scenario titled “Clever Together,” forexample, “a consortium of nations, NGOs [nongovernmental organizations], and companies
establish the Global Technology Assessment
Office” — a detail meant to symbolize how ahigh degree of international coordination andadaptation might lead to the formation of abody that anticipates technology’s potential
societal implications. That detail, along withdozens of others in each scenario, is there to
give you a more tangible “feel” for the world
described in the scenario. Please consider
names, dates, and other such specifics in eachscenario as proxies for types of events, notas necessary conditions for any particularscenario to unfold.
We now invite you to immerse yourself ineach future world and consider four different
visions for the evolution of technology andinternational development to 2030.

Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development

THE SCENARIO NARRATIVES

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Scenario
Narratives
LOCK STEP
A world of tighter top-down government control and moreauthoritarian leadership, with limited innovation and growing

Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development

citizen pushback18

In 2012, the pandemic that the world had been
anticipating for years finally hit. Unlike 2009’s
H1N1, this new influenza strain — originatingfrom wild geese — was extremely virulent anddeadly. Even the most pandemic-preparednations were quickly overwhelmed when thevirus streaked around the world, infecting nearly
20 percent of the global population and killing
8 million in just seven months, the majority ofthem healthy young adults. The pandemic also
had a deadly effect on economies: international
mobility of both people and goods screeched toa halt, debilitating industries like tourism andbreaking global supply chains. Even locally,normally bustling shops and office buildings sat
empty for months, devoid of both employees
and customers.

The pandemic blanketed the planet — thoughdisproportionate numbers died in Africa,
Southeast Asia, and Central America, wherethe virus spread like wildfire in the absenceof official containment protocols. But evenin developed countries, containment was achallenge. The United States’s initial policy of“strongly discouraging” citizens from flying
proved deadly in its leniency, accelerating the
spread of the virus not just within the U.S. but
across borders. However, a few countries did
fare better — China in particular. The Chinese
government’s quick imposition and enforcementof mandatory quarantine for all citizens, as wellas its instant and near-hermetic sealing off ofall borders, saved millions of lives, stopping
the spread of the virus far earlier than in othercountries and enabling a swifter postpandemic recovery.

restrictions, from the mandatory wearing of facemasks to body-temperature checks at the entries
to communal spaces like train stations andsupermarkets. Even after the pandemic faded,this more authoritarian control and oversightof citizens and their activities stuck and evenintensified. In order to protect themselves fromthe spread of increasingly global problems — frompandemics and transnational terrorism toenvironmental crises and rising poverty — leaders
around the world took a firmer grip on power.
At first, the notion of a more controlled world
gained wide acceptance and approval. Citizens
willingly gave up some of their sovereignty — andtheir privacy — to more paternalistic statesin exchange for greater safety and stability.
Citizens were more tolerant, and even eager, for
top-down direction and oversight, and national
leaders had more latitude to impose order in theways they saw fit. In developed countries, thisheightened oversight took many forms: biometric
IDs for all citizens, for example, and tighter
regulation of key industries whose stability

was deemed vital to national interests. In many
developed countries, enforced cooperation with asuite of new regulations and agreements slowly
but steadily restored both order and, importantly,
economic growth.
Across the developing world, however, thestory was different — and much more variable.
Top-down authority took different forms
in different countries, hinging largely on
the capacity, caliber, and intentions of theirleaders. In countries with strong and thoughtful
leaders, citizens’ overall economic statusand quality of life increased. In India, forexample, air quality drastically improved after
2016, when the government outlawed highemitting vehicles. In Ghana, the introductionof ambitious government programs to improvebasic infrastructure and ensure the availabilityof clean water for all her people led to a sharp
decline in water-borne diseases. But moreauthoritarian leadership worked less well — andin some cases tragically — in countries run byirresponsible elites who used their increased
power to pursue their own interests at theexpense of their citizens.
There were other downsides, as the rise ofvirulent nationalism created new hazards:
spectators at the 2018 World Cup, for example,

Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development

China’s government was not the only one thattook extreme measures to protect its citizens
from risk and exposure. During the pandemic,
national leaders around the world flexed theirauthority and imposed airtight rules and19

Scenario Narratives LOCK STEP

wore bulletproof vests that sported a patchof their national flag. Strong technology
regulations stifled innovation, kept costs high,and curbed adoption. In the developing world,
access to “approved” technologies increased

Meanwhile, in the developed world, the presenceof so many top-down rules and norms greatly
inhibited entrepreneurial activity. Scientists
and innovators were often told by governments
what research lines to pursue and were guided

but beyond that remained limited: the locus
of technology innovation was largely in thedeveloped world, leaving many developing
countries on the receiving end of technologies
that others consider “best” for them. Somemostly toward projects that would make money(e.g., market-driven product development) or
were “sure bets” (e.g., fundamental research),leaving more risky or innovative researchareas largely untapped. Well-off countries andmonopolistic companies with big research anddevelopment budgets still made significant
advances, but the IP behind their breakthroughsremained locked behind strict national or
corporate protection. Russia and India imposed
stringent domestic standards for supervisingand certifying encryption-related products andtheir suppliers — a category that in reality meant
all IT innovations. The U.S. and EU struck backwith retaliatory national standards, throwing
a wrench in the development and diffusion oftechnology globally.

“IT IS POSSIBLE TO DISCIPLINE
AND CONTROL SOME SOCIETIESFOR SOME TIME, BUT NOT THE
WHOLE WORLD ALL THE TIME.”

Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development– GK Bhat, TARU Leading Edge, India

20

governments found this patronizing and refused
to distribute computers and other technologies
that they scoffed at as “second hand.”Meanwhile, developing countries with moreresources and better capacity began to innovateinternally to fill these gaps on their own.

Especially in the developing world, acting in
one’s national self-interest often meant seeking
practical alliances that fit with thoseinterests — whether it was gaining access toneeded resources or banding together in orderto achieve economic growth. In South Americaand Africa, regional and sub-regional alliances
became more structured. Kenya doubled its

Wherever national interests clashed withindividual interests, there was conflict. Sporadic
pushback became increasingly organized andcoordinated, as disaffected youth and people
who had seen their status and opportunities slip

trade with southern and eastern Africa, as new
partnerships grew within the continent. China’s
investment in Africa expanded as the bargainof new jobs and infrastructure in exchange foraccess to key minerals or food exports proved
agreeable to many governments. Cross-borderties proliferated in the form of official security
aid. While the deployment of foreign security
teams was welcomed in some of the most direfailed states, one-size-fits-all solutions yielded
few positive results.

away — largely in developing countries — incited
civil unrest. In 2026, protestors in Nigeria
brought down the government, fed up with theentrenched cronyism and corruption. Even those
who liked the greater stability and predictabilityof this world began to grow uncomfortable andconstrained by so many tight rules and by thestrictness of national boundaries. The feelinglingered that sooner or later, something would
inevitably upset the neat order that the world’s
governments had worked so hard to establish. •By 2025, people seemed to be growing weary ofso much top-down control and letting leaders
and authorities make choices for them.

Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development

Scenario Narratives LOCK STEP

21

Scenario Narratives LOCK STEPHEADLINES IN LOCK STEP
Quarantine Restricts
In-Person Contact;
Cellular Networks
Overloaded(2013)

2010

Italy Addresses'Immigrant Caregiver'Gap with Robots(2017)

2015
Intercontinental
Trade Hit by Strict
Pathogen Controls(2015)

Vietnam to Require‘A Solar Panelon Every Home’(2022)

2020
Will Africa’s Embraceof Authoritarian
Capitalism a la
China Continue?
(2018)

2025

African Leaders Fear
Repeat of Nigeria's 2026
Government Collapse(2028)

2030

Proliferating Trade
Networks in Easternand Southern Africa
Strengthen Regional Ties
(2023)

Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development

ROLE OF PHILANTHROPY IN LOCK STEP

22

Philanthropic organizations will face hard choices in this world. Given the strongrole of governments, doing philanthropy will require heightened diplomacy skills andthe ability to operate effectively in extremely divergent environments. Philanthropy
grantee and civil society relationships will be strongly moderated by government,
and some foundations might choose to align themselves more closely with national
official development assistance (ODA) strategies and government objectives.
Larger philanthropies will retain an outsized share of influence, and many smaller
philanthropies may find value in merging financial, human, and operational resources.
Philanthropic organizations interested in promoting universal rights and freedoms will
get blocked at many nations’ borders. Developing smart, flexible, and wide-ranging
relationships in this world will be key; some philanthropies may choose to work onlyin places where their skills and services don’t meet resistance. Many governments
will place severe restrictions on the program areas and geographies that international
philanthropies can work in, leading to a narrower and stronger geographic focus or
grant-making in their home country only.

Scenario Narratives LOCK STEPTECHNOLOGY IN LOCK STEP
While there is no way of accurately predicting what the important technologicaladvancements will be in the future, the scenario narratives point to areas whereconditions may enable or accelerate the development of certain kinds of technologies.
Thus for each scenario we offer a sense of the context for technological innovation,
taking into consideration the pace, geography, and key creators. We also suggest a few
technology trends and applications that could flourish in each scenario.
Technological innovation in “Lock Step” is largely driven by government and is
focused on issues of national security and health and safety. Most technologicalimprovements are created by and for developed countries, shaped by governments’dual desire to control and to monitor their citizens. In states with poor governance,large-scale projects that fail to progress abound.

• Scanners using advanced functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)
technology become the norm at airports and other public areas to detect
abnormal behavior that may indicate “antisocial intent.”• In the aftermath of pandemic scares, smarter packaging for food and beverages
is applied first by big companies and producers in a business-to-businessenvironment, and then adopted for individual products and consumers.
• New diagnostics are developed to detect communicable diseases. The
application of health screening also changes; screening becomes a prerequisite
for release from a hospital or prison, successfully slowing the spread of many
diseases.
• Tele-presence technologies respond to the demand for less expensive, lowerbandwidth, sophisticated communications systems for populations whose travelis restricted.
• Driven by protectionism and national security concerns, nations create theirown independent, regionally defined IT networks, mimicking China’s firewalls.
Governments have varying degrees of success in policing internet traffic, butthese efforts nevertheless fracture the “World Wide” Web.

Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development

Technology trends and applications we might see:23

Scenario Narratives LOCK STEP

LIFE IN LOCK STEP
Manisha gazed out on the Ganges River, mesmerized by what she saw. Back in
2010, when she was 12 years old, her parents had brought her to this river so that she

Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development

could bathe in its holy waters. But standing at the edge, Manisha had been afraid. It
wasn’t the depth of the river or its currents that had scared her, but the water itself:
it was murky and brown and smelled pungently of trash and dead things. Manisha
had balked, but her mother had pushed her forward, shouting that this river flowedfrom the lotus feet of Vishnu and she should be honored to enter it. Along withmillions of Hindus, her mother believed the Ganges’s water could cleanse a person’s
soul of all sins and even cure the sick. So Manisha had grudgingly dunked herself
in the river, accidentally swallowing water in the process and receiving a bad caseof giardia, and months of diarrhea, as a result.

24

Remembering that experience is what made today so remarkable. It was now 2025.
Manisha was 27 years old and a manager for the Indian government’s Ganges
Purification Initiative (GPI). Until recently, the Ganges was still one of the mostpolluted rivers in the world, its coliform bacteria levels astronomical due to thefrequent disposal of human and animal corpses and of sewage (back in 2010, 89
million liters per day) directly into the river. Dozens of organized attempts to clean
the Ganges over the years had failed. In 2009, the World Bank even loaned India$1 billion to support the government’s multi-billion dollar cleanup initiative. But
then the pandemic hit, and that funding dried up. But what didn’t dry up was thegovernment’s commitment to cleaning the Ganges — now not just an issue of publichealth but increasingly one of national pride.
Manisha had joined the GPI in 2020, in part because she was so impressed by
the government’s strong stance on restoring the ecological health of India’s mosttreasured resource. Many lives in her home city of Jaipur had been saved by thegovernment’s quarantines during the pandemic, and that experience, thought
Manisha, had given the government the confidence to be so strict about river usage

Scenario Narratives LOCK STEP

now: how else could they get millions of Indian citizens to completely shift their

Manisha watched as an engineering team began unloading equipment on the banks.
Many top Indian scientists and engineers had been recruited by the government todevelop tools and strategies for cleaning the Ganges in more high-tech ways. Herfavorite were the submersible bots that continuously “swam” the river to detect,through sensors, the presence of chemical pathogens. New riverside filtration
systems that sucked in dirty river water and spit out far cleaner water were also
impressive — especially because on the outside they were designed to look likemini-temples. In fact, that’s why Manisha was at the river today, to oversee theinstallation of a filtration system located not even 100 feet from where she first
stepped into the Ganges as a girl. The water looked so much cleaner now, and recent
tests suggested that it might even meet drinkability standards by 2035. Manisha
was tempted to kick off her shoe and dip her toe in, but this was a restricted area
now — and she, of all people, would never break that law.

Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development

cultural practices in relationship to a holy site? Discarding ritually burned bodies
in the Ganges was now illegal, punishable by years of jail time. Companies foundto be dumping waste of any kind in the river were immediately shut down by thegovernment. There were also severe restrictions on where people could bathe andwhere they could wash clothing. Every 20 meters along the river was marked bya sign outlining the repercussions of “disrespecting India’s most treasured natural
resource.” Of course, not everyone liked it; protests flared every so often. But noone could deny that the Ganges was looking more beautiful and healthier than ever.

25

CLEVER TOGETHER
A world in which highly coordinated and successful
strategies emerge for addressing both urgent and entrenched

Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development

worldwide issues

26

The recession of 2008-10 did not turn into thedecades-long global economic slide that many
had feared. In fact, quite the opposite: strong
global growth returned in force, with the world
headed once again toward the demographic
and economic projections forecasted before thedownturn. India and China were on track to see
their middle classes explode to 1 billion by 2020.
Mega-cities like Sao Paulo and Jakarta expanded
at a blistering pace as millions poured in fromrural areas. Countries raced to industrialize
by whatever means necessary; the global
marketplace bustled.
But two big problems loomed. First, not all
people and places benefited equally from thisreturn to globalized growth: all boats wererising, but some were clearly rising more.
Second, those hell-bent on development

and expansion largely ignored the very
real environmental consequences of theirunrestricted growth. Undeniably, the planet’s
climate was becoming increasingly unstable.
Sea levels were rising fast, even as countries
continued to build-out coastal mega-cities. In
2014, the Hudson River overflowed into New
York City during a storm surge, turning theWorld Trade Center site into a three-foot-deeplake. The image of motorboats navigating
through lower Manhattan jarred the world’s
most powerful nations into realizing that climatechange was not just a developing-world problem.
That same year, new measurements showing that
atmospheric carbon dioxide levels were climbing
precipitously created new urgency and pressure
for governments (really, for everyone) to dosomething fast.

capture processes that would best support
the global ecosystem. A functioning global
cap and trade system was also established.
Worldwide, the pressure to reduce waste andincrease efficiency in planet-friendly ways wasthere, would not be enough to stave off a climate
disaster — or, for that matter, to effectively
address a host of other planetary-scale problems.
But highly coordinated worldwide strategies foraddressing such urgent issues just might. What
was needed was systems thinking — and systems
acting — on a global scale.

enormous. New globally coordinated systems
for monitoring energy use capacity — including
smart grids and bottom-up pattern recognition
technologies — were rolled out. These efforts
produced real results: by 2022, new projections
showed a significant slowing in the rise of
atmospheric carbon levels.

International coordination started slowly, thenaccelerated faster than anyone had imagined.
In 2015, a critical mass of middle income anddeveloped countries with strong economic
growth publicly committed to leveraging
their resources against global-scale problems,
beginning with climate change. Together, theirgovernments hashed out plans for monitoring
and reducing greenhouse gas emissions inthe short term and improving the absorptive
capacity of the natural environment over thelong term. In 2017, an international agreement
was reached on carbon sequestration (by then,most multinational corporations had a chiefcarbon officer) and intellectual and financial
resources were pooled to build out carbon

Inspired by the success of this experiment incollective global action, large-scale coordinatedinitiatives intensified. Centralized global
oversight and governance structures sprangup, not just for energy use but also for disease
and technology standards. Such systems
and structures required far greater levels oftransparency, which in turn required moretech-enabled data collection, processing, andfeedback. Enormous, benign “sousveillance”
systems allowed citizens to access data — all
publically available — in real time and react.
Nation-states lost some of their power andimportance as global architecture strengthened
and regional governance structures emerged.
International oversight entities like the UN

Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development

In such an interconnected world, where thebehaviors of one country, company, or individual
had potentially high-impact effects on all others,
piecemeal attempts by one nation here, one
small collective of environmental organizations

27

Scenario Narratives CLEVER TOGETHER

took on new levels of authority, as did regional
systems like the Association of Southeast Asian
Nations (ASEAN), the New Partnership for
Africa’s Development (NEPAD), and the AsianDevelopment Bank (ADB). The worldwide spirit“WHAT IS OFTEN SURPRISINGABOUT NEW TECHNOLOGIESIS COLLATERAL DAMAGE: THE
EXTENT OF THE PROBLEM THATYOU CAN CREATE BY SOLVING
ANOTHER PROBLEM IS ALWAYS A
BIT OF A SURPRISE.”

Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development– Michael Free, Program for Appropriate
Technology in Health (PATH)

28

of collaboration also fostered new alliances andalignments among corporations, NGOs, andcommunities.
These strong alliances laid the groundwork formore global and participatory attempts to solve
big problems and raise the standard of living of
everyone. Coordinated efforts to tackle longentrenched problems like hunger, disease, andaccess to basic needs took hold. New inexpensive
technologies like better medical diagnostics andmore effective vaccines improved healthcaredelivery and health outcomes. Companies,
NGOs, and governments — often acting
together — launched pilot programs and learninglabs to figure out how to best meet the needsof particular communities, increasing theknowledge base of what worked and what didn’t.
Pharmaceuticals giants released thousands of
drug compounds shown to be effective against
diseases like malaria into the public domain
as part of an “open innovation” agenda; theyalso opened their archives of R&D on neglecteddiseases deemed not commercially viable,
offering seed funding to scientists who wanted
to carry the research forward.
There was a push for major innovations inenergy and water for the developing world,
as those areas were thought to be the key toimproving equity. Better food distribution was
also high on the agenda, and more open markets
and south-south trade helped make this a reality.
In 2022, a consortium of nations, NGOs, andcompanies established the Global Technology
Assessment Office, providing easily accessible,
real-time information about the costs andbenefits of various technology applications todeveloping and developed countries alike. Allof these efforts translated into real progress onreal problems, opening up new opportunities

Scenario Narratives CLEVER TOGETHER

In many parts of the developing world, economic
growth rates increased due to a host of factors.
Improved infrastructure accelerated the greater
mobility of both people and goods, and urban
and rural areas got better connected. In Africa,
growth that started on the coasts spread inward
along new transportation corridors. Increased
trade drove the specialization of individual firms
and the overall diversification of economies.
In many places, traditional social barriers to
overcoming poverty grew less relevant as more
people gained access to a spectrum of usefultechnologies — from disposable computers to doit-yourself (DIY) windmills.
Given the circumstances that forced these newheights of global cooperation and responsibility,
it was no surprise that much of the growthin the developing world was achieved morecleanly and more “greenly.” In Africa, there
was a big push for solar energy, as the physicalgeography and low population density of muchof the continent enabled the proliferation ofsolar farms. The Desertec initiative to create
massive thermal electricity plants to supply
both North Africa and, via undersea cable lines,
Southern Europe was a huge success. By 2025,
a majority of electricity in the Maghreb wascoming from solar, with exports of that power
earning valuable foreign currency. The switch

to solar created new “sun” jobs, drastically cut
CO2 emissions, and earned governments billions
annually. India exploited its geography to create
similar “solar valleys” while decentralized solarpowered drip irrigation systems became popularin sub-Saharan Africa.
Reduced energy dependency enabled all of thesecountries and regions to better control andmanage their own resources. In Africa, politicalarchitecture above the nation-state level, likethe African Union, strengthened and contributed
to a “good governance” drive. Regional
integration through COMESA (the Common
Market for Eastern and Southern Africa) andother institutions allowed member nations tobetter organize to meet their collective needs as
consumers and increasingly as producers.
Over the course of two decades, enormous strides
were made to make the world less wasteful, more
efficient, and more inclusive. But the world was
far from perfect. There were still failed statesand places with few resources. Moreover, suchrapid progress had created new problems. Risingconsumption standards unexpectedly ushered
in a new set of pressures: the improved food
distribution system, for example, generated afood production crisis due to greater demand.
Indeed, demand for everything was growing
exponentially. By 2028, despite ongoing efforts
to guide “smart growth,” it was becoming clearthat the world could not support such rapid
growth forever. •Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development

to address the needs of the bottom billion — andenabling developing countries to become enginesof growth in their own right.

29

Scenario Narratives CLEVER TOGETHERHEADLINES IN CLEVER TOGETHER'Info Cruncher' Is
Grads' Job of
Choice as Data
Era Dawns(2016)

Global Economy
Turns the Corner(2011)

2010

2015
Radical U.S. and China
Emission Targets Signal
New Era in Climate
Change Negotiations(2015)

Consortium of Foundations
Launches Third Green
Revolution as Food
Shortages Loom (2027)

A First: U.S. Solar
Power Cheaper than Coal
(2020)

2020
Green Infrastructure
Reshapes Economic
Landscape(2018)

2025

2030

Transparency International
Reports 10th Consecutive Yearof Improved Governance(2025)

Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development

ROLE OF PHILANTHROPY IN CLEVER TOGETHER

30

In this world, philanthropic organizations focus their attention on the needs of thebottom billion, collaborating with governments, businesses, and local NGOs to improvestandards of living around the globe. Operationally, this is a “virtual model” worldin which philanthropies use all of the tools at their disposal to reinforce and bolster
their work. With partnerships and networks increasingly key, philanthropies work in amore virtual way, characterized by lots of wikis, blogs, workspaces, video conferences,and virtual convenings. Smaller philanthropies proliferate, with a growing number ofmajor donors emerging from the developing world.
Systems thinking and knowledge management prove to be critical skills, asphilanthropic organizations seek to share and spread best practices, identify leapfrog
opportunities, and better spot problems in failed or weak states. There are considerable
flows of talent between the for-profit and nonprofit sectors, and the lines between
these types of organizations become increasingly blurred.

Scenario Narratives CLEVER TOGETHERTECHNOLOGY IN CLEVER TOGETHER
In “Clever Together,” strong global cooperation on a range of issues drives technologicalbreakthroughs that combat disease, climate change, and energy shortages. Trade andforeign direct investment spread technologies in all directions and make products
cheaper for people in the developing world, thereby widening access to a range oftechnologies. The atmosphere of cooperation and transparency allows states andregions to glean insights from massive datasets to vastly improve the management
and allocation of financial and environmental resources.
Technology trends and applications we might see:• Intelligent electricity, water distribution, and transportation systems develop
in urban areas. In these “smart cities,” internet access is seen as a basic rightby the late 2010s.
• A malaria vaccine is developed and deployed broadly — saving millions of lives
in the developing world.
• Advances in low-cost mind-controlled prosthetics aid the 80 percent of global
amputees who live in developing countries.
• Solar power is made vastly more efficient through advances in materials,
including polymers and nanoparticles. An effective combination of
government subsidies and microfinance means solar is used for everythingfrom desalination for agriculture to wi-fi networks.
• Flexible and rapid mobile payment systems drive dynamic economic growthin the developing world, while the developed world is hampered by entrenchedbanking interests and regulation.

Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development• The cost of capturing data through nanosensors and smart networks falls
precipitously. In many developing countries, this leads to a proliferation of
new and useful services, including “sousveillance” mechanisms that improvegovernance and enable more efficient use of government resources.

31

Scenario Narratives CLEVER TOGETHER

LIFE IN CLEVER TOGETHER
Standing next to his desk at the World Meat Science Lab in Zurich, Alec took
another bite of the steak that his lab assistants had just presented to him and chewed

Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development

it rather thoughtfully. This wasn’t just any steak. It was research. Alec and his
research team had been working for months to fabricate a new meat product — one
that tasted just like beef yet actually contained only 50 percent meat; the remaining
half was a combination of synthetic meat, fortified grains, and nano-flavoring.
Finding the “right” formula for that combo had kept the lab’s employees working
around the clock in recent weeks. And judging from the look on Alec’s face, theirwork wasn’t over. “The flavor is still a few degrees off,” he told them. “And Kofi andAlana — see what we can do about enhancing this texture.”32

As Alec watched his team scramble back to their lab benches, he felt confident that
it wouldn’t be long before they would announce the invention of an exciting newmeat product that would be served at dinner tables everywhere. And, in truth, Alec’s
confidence was very well founded. For one, he had the world’s best and brightest
minds in food science from all over the world working together right here in his
lab. He also had access to seemingly infinite amounts of data and information on
everything from global taste preferences to meat distribution patterns — and just a
few touches on his lab’s research screens (so much easier than the clunky computersand keyboards of the old days) gave him instant access to every piece of researchever done in meat science or related fields from the 1800s up through the present(literally the present — access to posted scientific research was nearly instantaneous,delayed by a mere 1.3 seconds).
Alec also had strong motivation. There was no doubt that meat science — indeed,
all science — was much more exciting, challenging, and rewarding in 2023 than it
was a few decades ago. The shift from “lone wolf” science to globally coordinatedand open-platform research had greatly accelerated the speed and spread ofbreakthrough ideas and developments in all fields. As a result, scientists were

Scenario Narratives CLEVER TOGETHER

making real progress in addressing planet-wide problems that had previously
seemed so intractable: people were no longer dying as frequently from preventablediseases, for example, and alternative fuels were now mainstream.
But other trends were troubling — especially to a scientist who had spent his whole
career researching food. In cities and villages around the world where children
used to be hungry, access to higher-calorie meals had produced alarming increases
in the incidence of obesity and diabetes. The demand for meat, in particular, wasrising, but adding more animals to the planet created its own set of problems, suchas more methane and spiking water demand. And that’s where Alec saw both needand opportunity: why not make the planet’s meat supply go further by creating ahealthier alternative that contained less real meat?

Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development“Alec, we have a new version for you to try,” yelled Kofi from across the lab. That
was fast, thought Alec, as he searched around his desk for the fork.

33

HACK ATTACK
An economically unstable and shock-prone
world in which governments weaken, criminals thrive,

Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development

and dangerous innovations emerge

34

Devastating shocks like September 11, theSoutheast Asian tsunami of 2004, and the2010 Haiti earthquake had certainly primed
the world for sudden disasters. But no one
was prepared for a world in which large-scalecatastrophes would occur with such breathtaking
frequency. The years 2010 to 2020 were dubbed
the “doom decade” for good reason: the 2012
Olympic bombing, which killed 13,000, wasfollowed closely by an earthquake in Indonesia
killing 40,000, a tsunami that almost wipedout Nicaragua, and the onset of the West China
Famine, caused by a once-in-a-millennium
drought linked to climate change.
Not surprisingly, this opening series of deadly
asynchronous catastrophes (there were more) put
enormous pressure on an already overstressed
global economy that had entered the decade
still in recession. Massive humanitarian relief

efforts cost vast sums of money, but the primarysources — from aid agencies to developed-world
governments — had run out of funds to offer.
Most nation-states could no longer afford theirlocked-in costs, let alone respond to increased
citizen demands for more security, more
healthcare coverage, more social programs andservices, and more infrastructure repair. In
2014, when mudslides in Lima buried thousands,
only minimal help trickled in, prompting the
Economist headline: “Is the Planet Finally
Bankrupt?”
These dire circumstances forced tough tradeoffs.
In 2015, the U.S. reallocated a large share of its
defense spending to domestic concerns, pullingout of Afghanistan — where the resurgent Taliban
seized power once again. In Europe, Asia, SouthAmerica, and Africa, more and more nationstates lost control of their public finances, alongand networked criminal enterprises exploited
both the weakness of states and the desperationof individuals. With increasing ease, these“global guerillas” moved illicit products throughunderground channels from poor producer

also sparked proxy wars and low-level conflictin resource-rich parts of the developingworld. Nations raised trade barriers in order toprotect their domestic sectors against imports
and — in the face of global food and resource
shortages — to reduce exports of agricultural
produce and other commodities. By 2016, theglobal coordination and interconnectedness
that had marked the post-Berlin Wall world was
tenuous at best.

countries to markets in the developed world.
Using retired 727s and other rogue aircraft, theycrisscrossed the Atlantic, from South America
to Africa, transporting cocaine, weapons, andoperatives. Drug and gun money became acommon recruiting tool for the desperately poor.

With government power weakened, order rapidly
disintegrating, and safety nets evaporating,violence and crime grew more rampant.
Countries with ethnic, religious, or classdivisions saw especially sharp spikes in hostility:
Naxalite separatists dramatically expanded
their guerrilla campaign in East India; IsraeliPalestinian bloodshed escalated; and across
Africa, fights over resources erupted along
ethnic or tribal lines. Meanwhile, overtaxed
militaries and police forces could do little to stop
growing communities of criminals and terrorists
from gaining power. Technology-enabled gangs

Criminal networks also grew highly skilled
at counterfeiting licit goods through reverse
engineering. Many of these “rip-offs” andcopycats were of poor quality or downrightdangerous. In the context of weak healthsystems, corruption, and inattention to
standards — either within countries orfrom global bodies like the World HealthOrganization — tainted vaccines entered the
public health systems of several Africancountries. In 2021, 600 children in Cote d’Ivoire
died from a bogus Hepatitis B vaccine, which
paled in comparison to the scandal sparked bymass deaths from a tainted anti-malarial drug
years later. The deaths and resulting scandals
sharply affected public confidence in vaccine
delivery; parents not just in Africa but elsewhere

Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Developmentwith the capacity to help their citizens andretain stability and order. Resource scarcities andtrade disputes, together with severe economic
and climate stresses, pushed many alliancesand partnerships to the breaking point; they35

Scenario Narratives HACK ATTACK“WE HAVE THIS LOVE AFFAIR
WITH STRONG CENTRAL STATES,BUT THAT’S NOT THE ONLYPOSSIBILITY. TECHNOLOGY IS
GOING TO MAKE THIS EVEN MOREREAL FOR AFRICA. THERE IS THE
SAME CELLPHONE PENETRATIONRATE IN SOMALIA AS IN RWANDA.
IN THAT RESPECT, SOMALIA
WORKS.”

Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development– Aidan Eyakuze, Society for International
Development, Tanzania

36

began to avoid vaccinating their children, andit wasn’t long before infant and child mortality
rates rose to levels not seen since the 1970s.
Technology hackers were also hard at work.
Internet scams and pyramid schemes plagued
inboxes. Meanwhile, more sophisticatedhackers attempted to take down corporations,
government systems, and banks via phishingscams and database information heists, and their
many successes generated billions of dollars inlosses. Desperate to protect themselves and theirintellectual property, the few multinationals

still thriving enacted strong, increasingly
complex defensive measures. Patent applications
skyrocketed and patent thickets proliferated,as companies fought to claim and control eventhe tiniest innovations. Security measures andscreenings tightened.
This “wild west” environment had a profound
impact on innovation. The threat of being
hacked and the presence of so many thefts andfakes lowered the incentives to create “me first”
rather than “me too” technologies. And so many
patent thickets made the cross-pollination ofideas and research difficult at best. Blockbuster
pharmaceuticals quickly became artifacts ofthe past, replaced by increased productionof generics. Breakthrough innovations still
happened in various industries, but they werefocused more on technologies that could not beeasily replicated or re-engineered. And once
created, they were vigorously guarded by theirinventors — or even by their nations. In 2022, abiofuel breakthrough in Brazil was protected as anational treasure and used as a bargaining chipin trade with other countries.
Verifying the authenticity of anything wasincreasingly difficult. The heroic efforts
of several companies and NGOs to create

Scenario Narratives HACK ATTACK

preventing these networks from achieving thereliability required to become the backboneof developing economies — or a source oftrustworthy information for anybody.
Interestingly, not all of the “hacking” was bad.
Genetically modified crops (GMOs) and do-ityourself (DIY) biotech became backyard andgarage activities, producing important advances.
In 2017, a network of renegade African scientists
who had returned to their home countries afterworking in Western multinationals unveiled
the first of a range of new GMOs that boosted
agricultural productivity on the continent.
But despite such efforts, the global have/havenot gap grew wider than ever. The very rich still
had the financial means to protect themselves;gated communities sprung up from New Yorkto Lagos, providing safe havens surrounded byslums. In 2025, it was de rigueur to build nota house but a high-walled fortress, guarded byarmed personnel. The wealthy also capitalized on
the loose regulatory environment to experimentwith advanced medical treatments and other
under-the-radar activities.
Those who couldn’t buy their way out ofchaos — which was most people — retreated
to whatever “safety” they could find. With
opportunity frozen and global mobility at anear standstill — no place wanted more people,
especially more poor people — it was often aretreat to the familiar: family ties, religious
beliefs, or even national allegiance. Trust
was afforded to those who guaranteed safety
and survival — whether it was a warlord, anevangelical preacher, or a mother. In someplaces, the collapse of state capacity led to aresurgence of feudalism. In other areas, people
managed to create more resilient communities
operating as isolated micro versions of formerly
large-scale systems. The weakening of national
governments also enabled grassroots movements
to form and grow, creating rays of hope amid
the bleakness. By 2030, the distinction between“developed” and “developing” nations no longer
seemed particularly descriptive or relevant. •Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development

recognized seals of safety and approval proved
ineffective when even those seals were hacked.
The positive effects of the mobile and internet
revolutions were tempered by their increasingfragility as scamming and viruses proliferated,

37

Scenario Narratives HACK ATTACKHEADLINES IN HACK ATTACK
Millennium
Development Goals
Pushed Back to 2020(2012)

Islamic Terror
Networks Thrive in
Latin America(2016)

2010

2015

Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development

Violence Against
Minorities and Immigrants
Spikes Across Asia
(2014)

38

Congo Death Toll Hits
10,000 in Malaria
Drug Scandal (2018)

Warlords Dispense Vital
Medicines to Southeast
Asian Communities(2028)

Doctors Without Borders
Confined Within Borders(2020)

2020

2025
Nations Struggling with
Resource Constraints Raceto Scale Synthetic Biology(2021)

2030
India-Pakistan
Water War Rages(2027)ROLE OF PHILANTHROPY IN HACK ATTACK
Philanthropy is less about affecting change than about promoting stability andaddressing basic survival needs. Philanthropic organizations move to support urgent
humanitarian efforts at the grassroots level, doing “guerrilla philanthropy” byidentifying the “hackers” and innovators who are catalysts of change in local settings.
Yet identifying pro-social entrepreneurs is a challenge, because verification is difficult
amid so much scamming and deception.
The operational model in this world is a “fortress model” in which philanthropic
organizations coalesce into a strong, single unit to combat fraud and lack of trust.
Philanthropies’ biggest assets are their reputation, brand, and legal/financial capacity
to ward off threats and attempts at destabilization. They also pursue a less global
approach, retreating to doing work in their home countries or a few countries that theyknow well and perceive as being safe.

Scenario Narratives HACK ATTACKTECHNOLOGY IN HACK ATTACK
Mounting obstacles to market access and to knowledge creation and sharing slow thepace of technological innovation. Creative repurposing of existing technologies — forgood and bad — is widespread, as counterfeiting and IP theft lower incentives fororiginal innovation. In a world of trade disputes and resource scarcities, much effort
focuses on finding replacements for what is no longer available. Pervasive insecurity
means that tools of aggression and protection — virtual as well as corporeal — are inhigh demand, as are technologies that will allow hedonistic escapes from the stressesof life.
Technology trends and applications we might see:

• New threats like weaponized biological pathogens and destructive botnets
dominate public attention, but enduring technologies, like the AK-47, also
remain weapons of choice for global guerrillas.
• The internet is overrun with spam and security threats and becomesstrongly associated with illicit activity — especially on “dark webs” where nogovernment can monitor, identify, or restrict activities.
• Identity-verification technologies become a staple of daily life, with somehitches — a database of retina recordings stolen by hackers in 2017 is used tocreate numerous false identities still “at large” in the mid-2020s.
• With the cost of cosmetic surgery dropping, procedures like the lunchtime
facelift become routine among emerging middle classes.

Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development• Echoing the rise of synthetic chemicals in the nineteenth century, synthetic
biology, often state-funded, is used to “grow” resources and foodstuffs thathave become scarce.

39

Scenario Narratives HACK ATTACK

LIFE IN HACK ATTACK
Trent never thought that his past experience as a government intelligence officer
would convert into something…philanthropic. But in a world full of deceit andScenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development

scamming, his skills at discerning fact from fiction and developing quick yet deep
local knowledge were highly prized. For three months now he had been working
for a development organization, hired to find out what was happening in the “grey”
areas in Botswana — a country that was once praised for its good governance but
whose laws and institutions had begun to falter in the last few years, with corruption
on the rise. His instructions were simple: focus not on the dysfunctional (which,
Trent could see, was everywhere) but rather look through the chaos to see what was
actually working. Find local innovations and practices that were smart and goodand might be adopted or implemented elsewhere. “Guerrilla philanthropy” was what
they called it, a turn of phrase that he liked quite a bit.

40

His trip into Botswana had been eventful — to put it mildly. On-time flights were rare
these days, and the plane got diverted three times because of landing authorization
snafus. At the Gaborone airport, it took Trent six hours to clear customs andimmigration. The airport was bereft of personnel, and those on duty took theirtime scrutinizing and re-scrutinizing his visa. Botswana had none of the high-techbiometric scanning checkpoints — technology that could literally see right throughyou — that most developed nations had in abundance in their airports, along theirborders, and in government buildings. Once out of the airport Trent was shockedby how many guns he saw — not just slung on the shoulders of police, but carried byregular people. He even saw a mother with a baby in one arm and an AK-47 in theother. This wasn’t the Botswana he remembered way back when he was stationed
here 20 years ago as an embassy employee.
The organization that hired him was probably more right than it realized in calling
it guerrilla philanthropy. After many weeks spent chasing down leads in Gaborone,
then an unfortunate stint that had him hiking for miles alone through the Kalahari

Scenario Narratives HACK ATTACK

Desert, Trent found himself traveling deep into the Chobe Forest (a nice reprieve,

Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development

he thought, from inhaling all that sand). One of his informants had told him abouta group of smart youngsters who had set up their own biotechnology lab on thebanks of the Chobe River, which ran along the forest’s northern boundary. He’dbeen outfitted with ample funds for grant-making, not the forest bribes he hadheard so much about; regardless of what was taking place in the world around him,
he was under strict orders to behave ethically. Trent was also careful to cover his
tracks to avoid being kidnapped by international crime syndicates — including theRussian mafia and the Chinese triads — that had become very active and influential
in Botswana. But he’d made it through, finally, to the lab, which he later learned
was under the protection of the local gun lord. As expected, counterfeit vaccines
were being manufactured. But so were GMO seeds. And synthetic proteins. And ahost of other innovations that the people who hired him would love to know about.

41

SMART SCRAMBLE
An economically depressed world in which individuals andcommunities develop localized, makeshift solutions to a

Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development

growing set of problems

42

The global recession that started in 2008 did nottrail off in 2010 but dragged onward. Vigorous
attempts to jumpstart markets and economies
didn’t work, or at least not fast enough toreverse the steady downward pull. The combined
private and public debt burden hanging over thedeveloped world continued to depress economic
activity, both there and in developing countries
with economies dependent on exporting to(formerly) rich markets. Without the ability toboost economic activity, many countries saw
their debts deepen and civil unrest and crime
rates climb. The United States, too, lost much ofits presence and credibility on the international
stage due to deepening debt, debilitated markets,and a distracted government. This, in turn,led to the fracturing or decoupling of many

international collaborations started by or reliant
on the U.S.’s continued strength.
Also in trouble was China, where social
stability grew more precarious. Depressed
economic activity, combined with the ecologicalconsequences of China’s rapid growth, started
to take their toll, causing the shaky balance that
had held since 1989 to finally break down. With
their focus trained on managing the serious
political and economic instability at home, theChinese sharply curtailed their investmentsin Africa and other parts of the developingworld. Indeed, nearly all foreign investment
in Africa — as well as formal, institutionalflows of aid and other support for the poorest
countries — was cut back except in the gravest
humanitarian emergencies. Overall, economic

Not that anyone had time to think about the
future — present challenges were too pressing.
In the developed world, unemployment rates
skyrocketed. So did xenophobia, as companies
and industries gave the few available jobs tonative-born citizens, shunning foreign-born
applicants. Great numbers of immigrants who
had resettled in the developed world suddenly
found that the economic opportunities that had
drawn them were now paltry at best. By 2018,
London had been drained of immigrants, as theyheaded back to their home countries, taking
their education and skills with them. Reverse
migration left holes in the communities ofdeparture — both socially and literally — as stores
formerly owned by immigrants stood empty.
And their homelands needed them. Across thedeveloping world and especially in Africa,
economic survival was now firmly in local
hands. With little help or aid coming through“official” and organized channels — and in theabsence of strong trade and foreign currency
earnings — most people and communities had nochoice but to help themselves and, increasingly,
one another. Yet “survival” and “success”
varied greatly by location — not just by country,
but by city and by community. Communities
inside failed states suffered the most, theirpoor growing still poorer. In many places, thefailures of political leadership and the stresses of
economic weakness and social conflict stifled theability of people to rise above theirdire circumstances.
Not surprisingly, across much of the developingworld the rural-urban divide gaped wider,as more limited availability and access toresources like IT and trade made survival
and self-sufficiency much more challenging
for non-urban dwellers. Communications andinteractions that formerly served to bridge one
family or one village or one student with theircounterparts in other places — from emailingto phone calls to web postings — became lessreliable. Internet access had not progressed
far beyond its 2010 status, in part because
the investment dollars needed to build out thenecessary infrastructure simply weren’t there.
When cellphone towers or fiber optic cables
broke down, repairs were often delayed bymonths or even years. As a result, only people
in certain geographies had access to the latest

Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development

stability felt so shaky that the occurrence of asudden climate shock or other disaster would
likely send the world into a tailspin. Luckily,
those big shocks didn’t occur, though there was alingering concern that they could in the future.

43

Scenario Narratives SMART SCRAMBLE“THE SPREADING OF IDEAS
DEPENDS ON ACCESS TO
COMMUNICATION, PEERGROUPS, AND COMMUNITIES OF
PRACTICE. EVEN IF SOMEONE
HAS BLUEPRINTS TO MAKE
SOMETHING, THEY MAY NOTHAVE THE MATERIALS OR KNOWHOW. IN A WORLD SUCH AS
THIS, HOW DO YOU CREATEAN ECOSYSTEM OF RESEARCHAMONG THESE COMMUNITIES?”

Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development– Jose Gomez-Marquez, Program Director
for the Innovations in International Healthinitiative (IIH), MIT

44communication and internet gadgets, whileothers became more isolated for lack ofsuch connections.
But there were silver linings. Government
capacity improved in more advanced parts of thedeveloping world where economies had alreadybegun to generate a self-sustaining dynamic
before the 2008-2010 crisis, such as Indonesia,
Rwanda, Turkey, and Vietnam. Areas with goodaccess to natural resources, diverse skill sets,

and a stronger set of overlapping institutions
did far better than others; so did cities andcommunities where large numbers of “returnees”
helped drive change and improvement. Most
innovation in these better-off places involved
modifying existing devices and technologies tobe more adaptive to a specific context. But people
also found or invented new ways — technologicaland non-technological — to improve theircapacity to survive and, in some cases, toraise their overall living standards. In Accra, areturning Ghanaian MIT professor, working withresettled pharma researchers, helped invent acheap edible vaccine against tuberculosis that
dramatically reduced childhood mortality acrossthe continent. In Nairobi, returnees launched alocal “vocational education for all” project thatproved wildly successful and was soon replicatedin other parts of sub-Saharan Africa.
Makeshift, “good enough” technology
solutions — addressing everything from water
purification and harnessing energy to improved
crop yield and disease control — emerged to fill
the gaps. Communities grew tighter. Micromanufacturing, communal gardens, andpatchwork energy grids were created at the local
level for local purposes. Many communities took
on the aura of co-ops, some even launchingcurrencies designed to boost local trade andbring communities closer together. Nowhere wasthis more true than in India, where localized
experiments proliferated, and succeeded or
failed, with little connection to or impact onor philanthropic support — did help, enabling
students in isolated pockets in the developingworld to access knowledge and instruction
through the written word and other media like
video. But the development of tangible devices,other parts of the country — or the world.

products, and innovations continued to lag inplaces where local manufacturing skills andcapacities had not yet scaled. More complex
engineering solutions proved even more difficult
to develop and diffuse.

These developments were encouraging, but also
frustrating. In the absence of enduring trade and
FDI channels, local experiments and innovations
could neither scale nor boost overall growth. For
those looking, it was difficult to find or accesscreative solutions. Scaling was further inhibitedby the lack of compatible technology standards,
making innovations difficult to replicate. Apps
developed in rural China simply didn’t work inurban India.
High-speed internet access — which gradually
emerged in some areas despite weak government

By 2025, collaboration was finally improving,with ecosystems of research and sharing — manyof them “virtual” — beginning to emerge. Yet
without major progress in global economic
integration and collaboration, many worried that
good ideas would stay isolated, and survival andsuccess would remain a local — not a global or
national — phenomenon. •Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development

Scenario Narratives SMART SCRAMBLE

45

Scenario Narratives SMART SCRAMBLE

HEADLINES IN SMART SCRAMBLE
National Medical Labs inSoutheast Asia Herald
New Diagnostics for
Native Diseases(2013)

2010

2015
Low-Cost Water
Purification Device Halves
Diarrhea Deaths in India(2015)

Chinese Government
Pressured as Protests
Spread to 250 Cities(2017)

Maker Faire Ghana Partners
with ‘Idol’ Franchise to
Spotlight Young Innovators(2027)

Famine Haunts
Ethiopia—Again(2022)

2020'Returnee' Innovators
Struggle to Expand Sales
Beyond Home Markets(2020)2025

2030

VC Spending
Within Sub-SaharanAfrica Triples(2025)

Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development

ROLE OF PHILANTHROPY IN SMART SCRAMBLE

46

Philanthropic organizations look to fund at the grassroots level, in order to reach people
more quickly and solve short-term problems. The meta-goal in this world is to scale up:
to identify and build capacity from the individual through the institutional, because
without global coordination, innovation cannot scale on its own. Philanthropy requires
a keen screening capacity to identify highly localized solutions, with specialized
pockets of expertise that make partnerships more challenging and transitions between
sectors and issues harder to achieve.
Philanthropy operations are decentralized; headquarters are less important, andthe ability to quickly access different parts of the world and reconfigure teams on
short notice is key. Office space is rented by the day or week, not the month or year,
because more people are in the field — testing, evaluating, and reporting on myriad
pilot projects.

Scenario Narratives SMART SCRAMBLETECHNOLOGY IN SMART SCRAMBLE
Economic and political instability fracture societies in the developed world, resources
for technology development diminish, and talented immigrants are forced to returnto their countries of origin. As a result, capacity and knowledge are distributed more
widely, allowing many small pockets of do-it-yourself innovation to emerge. Low-tech,“good enough” solutions abound, cobbled together with whatever materials and designs
can be found. However, the transfer of cutting-edge technology through foreign direct
investment is rare. Structural deficiencies in the broader innovation ecosystem  —  i naccessing capital, markets, and a stable internet — and in the proliferation of local
standards limit wider growth and development.
Technology trends and applications we might see:• Breakdowns in the global medicine supply chain accelerate the emergence of
locally bioengineered super-strength homeopathic remedies, which replace
antibiotics in the dispensaries of many developing-world hospitals.
• Widespread micro-manufacturing, using 3D printers, enables the fabricationof replacement components for engines and machines, allowing “perpetualmaintenance” to compensate for broken trade links.
• Garden allotments proliferate in mega-cities as new urban-dwellers seek tosupplement a scarce food supply and maintain their agricultural heritage.
• Technically advanced communities use mesh networks to ensure high-speed
internet access, but most rural poor remain cut off from access.

Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development• Energy technology improvements are geared more toward efficiency — getting
more from existing sources of power — than new-generation technologies,
though some local improvements in generating and distributing wind andgeothermal energy do occur.

47

Scenario Narratives SMART SCRAMBLE

LIFE IN SMART SCRAMBLE
The beat-up six-seater plane in which Lidi was the lone passenger lurched suddenly.
She groaned, grabbed the armrests, and held on as the plane dipped sharply before

Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development

finally settling into a smooth flight path. Lidi hated small planes. But with very
few commercial jets crisscrossing Africa these days, she didn’t have much choice.
Lidi — an Eritrean by birth — was a social entrepreneur on a mission that she deemed
critical to the future of her home continent, and enduring these plane flights wasan unfortunate but necessary sacrifice. Working together with a small team oftechnologists, Lidi’s goal was to help the good ideas and innovations that were
emerging across Africa to spread faster — or, really, spread at all.

48

In this, Lidi had her work cut out for her. Accelerating and scaling the impactof local solutions developed for very local markets was far from easy — especiallygiven the patchiness of internet access across Africa and the myopic perspectivethat was now, in 2025, a widespread phenomenon. She used to worry about how toscale good ideas from continent to continent; these days she’d consider it a great
success to extend them 20 miles. And the creative redundancy was shocking! Just
last week, in Mali, Lidi had spent time with a farmer whose co-op was developing a
drought-resistant cassava. They were extremely proud of their efforts, and for goodreason. Lidi didn’t have the heart to tell them that, while their work was indeed
brilliant, it had already been done. Several times, in several different places.
During her many flights, Lidi had spent hours looking out the window, gazing
down on the villages and cities below. She wished there were an easier way to let
the innovators in those places know that they might not be inventing, but rather
independently reinventing, tools, goods, processes, and practices that were alreadyin use. What Africa lacked wasn’t great ideas and talent: both were abundant. The
missing piece was finding a way to connect those dots. And that’s why she was backon this rickety plane again and heading to Tunisia. She and her team were now
concentrating on promoting mesh networks across Africa, so that places lacking
internet access could share nodes, get connected, and maybe even share and scale
their best innovations.

Concluding
Thoughts
As you have seen, each of the scenarios, if it were to
unfold, would call for different strategies and have different
implications for how a range of organizations will work andrelate to changes in technology. But no matter what world
might emerge, there are real choices to be made about what
areas and goals to address and how to drive success toward

We hope that reading the scenario narratives andtheir accompanying stories about philanthropy,
technology, and people has sparked yourimagination, provoking new thinking about
these emergent themes and their possibilities.
Three key insights stood out to us as wedeveloped these scenarios.
First, the link between technology andgovernance is critical to consider in better
understanding how technology could be
developed and deployed. In some futures, theprimacy of the nation-state as a unit of analysis
in development was questioned as both supra- or
sub-national structures proved more salient tothe achievement of development goals. In otherfutures, the nation-state’s power strengthened
and it became an even more powerful actor
both to the benefit and to the detriment of

the development process, depending on thequality of governance. Technologies will affectgovernance, and governance in turn will playa major role in determining what technologies
are developed and who those technologies areintended, and able, to benefit.
A second recurring theme in the scenarios is thatdevelopment work will require different levels ofintervention, possibly simultaneously. In somescenarios, philanthropic organizations and otheractors in development face a set of obstacles inworking with large institutions, but may face a
yet-unfolding set of opportunities to work with
nontraditional partners — even individuals. The
organization that is able to navigate between
these levels and actors may be best positioned todrive success.

Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development

particular objectives.

49

Concluding Thoughts

Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development

DEVELOPMENT-LED
INTERVENTIONS ARE OFTEN NOTCAREFUL ENOUGH ABOUT WHAT
THE TECHNOLOGY NEEDS IN
ORDER TO WORK ON A THREE,
FIVE, OR SEVEN YEAR CYCLE.
WHAT SCALE IS REQUIREDFOR DEPLOYMENT TO BE
SUCCESSFUL? WHAT LEVEL OFEDUCATION IS NEEDEDTO BE SUSTAINABLE IN TERMS
OF MAINTENANCE? HOW DO
THESE REQUIREMENTS EVOLVEOVER TIME?

50– Isha Ray, Professor, University ofCalifornia-Berkeley School of Information,
Energy, and Resources Group

The third theme highlights the potential valueof scenarios as one critical element of strategy
development. These narratives have served to
kick-start the idea generation process, build thefuture-oriented mindset of participants, andprovide a guide for ongoing trend monitoringand horizon scanning activities. They also offer
a useful framework that can help in tracking andmaking sense of early indicators and milestones
that might signal the way in which the world isactually transforming.
While these four scenarios vary significantly
from one another, one theme is common to themall: new innovations and uses of technology
will be an active and integral part of theinternational development story going forward.
The changing nature of technologies could
shape the characteristics of development and thekinds of development aid that are in demand. In
a future in which technologies are effectively
adopted and adapted by poor people on a broad
scale, expectations about the provision ofservices could fundamentally shift. Developinga deeper understanding of the ways in which
technology can impact development will better
prepare everyone for the future, and help all of
us drive it in new and positive directions.

Appendix
CRITICAL UNCERTAINTIESThe following is a list of the 15 critical uncertainties presented to participants during this project’s
primary scenario creation workshop. These uncertainties were themselves selected from a significantly
longer list generated during earlier phases of research and extensive interviewing. The uncertainties fall
into three categories: technological, social and environmental, and economic and political.
Each uncertainty is presented along with two polar endpoints, both representing a very different directionin which that uncertainty might develop.

TECHNOLOGICAL UNCERTAINTIES
technologies with the mostimpact on development

both developed anddeveloping worlds



origin of technology
innovations critical todevelopment

slow the adoptionof novel technologiessocial and cultural norms



new innovations that
substantially reduce child andinfant mortality (vaccines,
treatments, cures)few

 existing technologies
developed world and some

 BRICs

allow for rapid adoption

 of novel technologies
 manySOCIAL & ENVIRONMENTAL UNCERTAINTIES
restricted 

static, traditional

community identity in thedeveloping world
educational and employment
opportunities for women

occurrence of “shocks”
like disease, famine, andnatural disasters

poor and worsening

quality of the local
environment in the developingworld (air, water, sanitation,
built environment, etc.)

de-prioritized

global climate change
awareness and action

infrequent and manageable

dynamic, open to the novel and nontraditional
 expanding
frequent and highly disruptiveScenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development

new technologies

51

improved and improving

 prioritizedECONOMIC & POLITICAL UNCERTAINTIES
inhibiting 

worse than expected

static

global economic performance,
2010-2015
rules and norms aroundentrepreneurial activity
education and training
opportunities in thedeveloping world improves significantly
 supportive
 increasing

 conflict in the developing world  pervasive and widespread
weak, with barriers tointernational economic andstrong, with more supranational cooperationcooperation 
strategic relationships
worse and more prone tofood security in better and more secure
disruptions 
the developing world

Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development

marginal and contained

52

LIST OF PARTICIPANTS

ROCKEFELLER FOUNDATION STAFF

This report is the result of extensive effort andcollaboration among Rockefeller Foundation
initiative staff, Foundation grantees, and external
experts. The Rockefeller Foundation and GBN
would like to extend special thanks to all of theindividuals who contributed their thoughtfulness
and expertise throughout the scenario process.
Their enthusiastic participation in interviews,
workshops, and the ongoing iteration of the
scenarios made this co-creative process morestimulating and engaging that it could ever havebeen otherwise.

Project Leads
Claudia Juech, Managing Director
Evan Michelson, Senior Research AssociateCore Team
Karl Brown, Associate Director
Robert Buckley, Managing Director
Lily Dorment, Research Associate
Brinda Ganguly, Associate Director
Veronica Olazabal, Research Associate
Gary Toenniessen, Managing Director
Thank you as well to all Foundation staff who
participated in the scenario creation workshop
in December.
A special thank you also to Laura Yousef.

ROCKEFELLER FOUNDATION GRANTEESGLOBAL BUSINESS NETWORK

G.K. Bhat, TARU Leading Edge, India

Andrew Blau, Co-President

Le Bach Duong, Institute for Social Development
Studies, Vietnam

Tara Capsuto, Senior Practice Associate
Lynn Carruthers, Visual Practitioner

Aidan Eyakuze, Society for International
Development, Tanzania

Michael Costigan, Practitioner

Michael Free, PATH, Seattle, WA

Jenny Johnston, Senior Editor

Namrita Kapur, Root Capital, Boston, MA

Barbara Kibbe, Vice President ofClient Services, Monitor InstitutePaul Kukubo, Kenya ICT Board, Kenya
Joseph Mureithi, Kenyan Agriculture ResearchInstitute, Kenya

Brie Linkenhoker, Senior Practitioner
Peter Schwartz, Chairman

EXTERNAL EXPERTS

Robert de Jongh, Managing Regional Director,
SNV Latin America
José Gomez-Marquez, Program Director for theInnovations in International Health initiative (IIH),
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Natalie Jeremijenko, Experimental Designer andDirector of xdesign Environmental Health Clinic,
New York University
Athar Osama, Visiting Fellow, Frederick S. Pardee
Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future,
Boston University
Isha Ray, Professor, School of Information (Energy andResources Group), University of California-Berkeley
Enrique Rueda-Sabater, Director of Strategy andBusiness Development for Emerging Markets, Cisco
Caroline Wagner, Senior Analyst, SRI International
and Research Scientist, Center for International
Science and Technology Policy, The George
Washington University

Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development

Stewart Brand, Cofounder of GBN and President of theLong Now Foundation

53

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