Transport and logistics links in Africa remain costly and unreliable, especially for reaching 
remote communities. In rural areas, only about a third of Africans live within 2 kilometers of an all-weather road, and the current infrastructure investment gaps in road transport infrastructure in the region amount to billions of dollars annually. The national road density in the region remains less than a quarter of the global average. The intensifying effects of climate change and, in parts of the region, conflict and violence, further hinder the ability of governments and businesses to efficiently and reliably ensure the delivery of goods and services. These gaps also present enormous challenges to meeting the Sustainable Development Goals, from health to agricultural productivity to food security.
Tag Archives: Drones
eC2: Imagery collection in Indonesia (Drone and street-view)
Deadline: 05-Dec-2018 at 11:59:59 PM (Eastern Time – Washington D.C.)
The World Bank invites the submission of Expressions of Interest (EOI) from qualified
firms to supply drone and street-view imagery data collection services in a secondary city in Indonesia. For the street view images, the firm will be expected to use both a car mounted camera as well as more portable 360-degree devices. For the drone images, the size of the area of interest (AOI) will total roughly 80 square meters, however the data can be parsed into manageable sized mosaics.
All of the images submitted by the firm will be used to create a unified and detailed housing inventory database that assesses the quality, characteristics, and potential risks of each home.
Top 7 disruptive technologies for cities
Imagine you were working in development and poverty reduction in the early 1990s (I was!). Only one website existed in all the world in August 1991 (today there are over 1.5 billion). Mobile phones were expensive, rare, and clunky. Very few would anticipate a situation in which India would have more mobile phones than toilets.
To paraphrase Bill Gates: we tend to overestimate the changes that will happen in the short term and underestimate those in the long term. Technology is quietly but radically disrupting and transforming how cities deliver services to their citizens. It does that in a way that fundamentally alters not just the mode of delivery but its underlying economics and financing.
Finger Splints, Coding, Drones and R2D2: The Evolving Face of Technology and Development
Blood-delivering drones? Check. 3D-printer working off grid to print finger splints?
Check. Disadvantaged women trained and employed in software-developing? Check. Is this how technology can deliver for development?
First things first. Let’s go back to the first principles. The World Bank’s World Development Report 2016 used a 3X3 framework to think about digital technology from a development lens: inclusion, efficiency and innovation for people, governments and businesses. Digital technologies, when employed as a tool for development, have the capacity to promote inclusive economies and societies, build upon existing capital and generate economies of scale. Herein lies powerful potential.
Netherlands for the World Bank 
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