Blogs

Digital inclusion has become a fundamental prerequisite for accessing the modern financial system and ensuring the effective delivery of essential governance services. India and other low- and middle-income countries have seen digital expansion at an enormous pace. However, the gender divide is glaring—in terms of mobile money account ownership, it stands at 56 percentage points (GSMA 2024 report).

While the vast majority of the world’s population has access to electricity, 571.2 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa do not. At the same time, to meet interconnected climate goals, reliance on traditional energy sources needs to be reduced in favor of renewable and efficient energy.

While ensuring healthy lives for all ages is among the top Sustainable Development Goals,  progress towards achieving this objective has recently decelerated as far as children are concerned. There has been an alarming, sustained decline in child vaccinations due to the COVID-19 pandemic and other ongoing crises, putting millions of children at risk from preventable diseases and death.

Social science research is currently facing questions about credibility, as existing evidence points to the lack of replicability of reported results. Multiple instances have occurred where users have failed to reproduce the original results, even when the same data and code were used, casting doubt on the reliability of published findings. In response, the open science movement, promoting the sharing of data, code, and research materials, has emerged as a key initiative aimed at improving transparency and accountability in research. 

Progress to achieve gender equality by 2030 – the 5th Sustainable Development Goal – has stalled. The pandemic set back gains that had been made toward equality, and gender disparities remain entrenched in labor-force participation, unpaid care work, and access to essential services. Nearly one in five young women is married before the age of 18, and more than 245 million women and girls experience physical or sexual violence by an intimate partner each year (United Nations, 2023).