This year, Digital@DAI published more than 50 posts covering everything from women’s entrepreneurship in Cambodia to cyber security for development to smartphone apps for fisheries in Central America.

We featured digital experts from organizations such as John’s Hopkins University, Simprints, Every1Mobile, Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT), and Panoply Digital, and generated nearly 47,000 page views. The blog continues to explore the potential of digital technology across sectors, geographies, clients, and constituents, reflecting the work that we do. As we continue to engage with all of you—and with the ICT4D community through DAI’s Center for Digital Acceleration (CDA)—our focus on research and products will expand as we ensure that our field-focused deployments of digital solutions are responsible, inclusive, and dynamic.

In our final post of 2017 we reviewed the 10 most-read articles of the year. With our audience and number of blog posts continuing to grow, we now present our top 10 for 2018. These posts showcase a range of topics, content, and writers. Going into 2019, we hope you will connect with us, read the blog, and subscribe to Digital@DAI so you don’t miss any updates in the coming year.

2018YearDAIDig-17b95e.PNG

  1. Fortnite for International Development. This post captures some of the magic of the game that captivates people ages 8 to 80 and comments on how we can harness it for Digital for Development.

  2. Apply Now: Support USAID Missions to Improve Broadband Connectivity. Through the U.S. Agency for International Development-funded Digital Frontiers Program, we have identified providers who can work toward efficiently aggregating demand for broadband across country programs, thus lowering costs so more people can obtain affordable access to the internet. We are thrilled to see how many people want to be involved with this Digital Frontiers initiative and we look forward to sharing future updates with you.

  3. Build a Facebook Messenger Chatbot in 5 Steps in Just 5 Minutes. Growing our ability to build tools and products has been a big part of our work in 2018. This post breaks down how to build a chatbot, in an approachable way, for those of us who don’t code all day.

  4. Getting Started With RStudio, Part 1. For those of us who do code all day, this post gets into the tech and explores RStudio. Look for more posts like this in 2019!

  5. We Don’t Need to Reinvent the Wheel, But it’s Time to Invest in Roads and Highways. This post from Dr. Alain Labrique highlights how we should think differently about the path forward for digital health.

  6. Why is DAI Investing in a Coding School? DAI’s partnership with Code Fellows and United Solutions aligns with our global mission to improve economic opportunity. Stay tuned for how we are expanding and evolving our commitment to the Code Partners program in 2019.

  7. Blockchain for Development Part 1: Understanding the Tech. Blockchain is likely one of the most googled terms in 2018. This post debunks the term and provides a brief overview of the technology. It also shares additional resources about blockchain.

  8. Digital Insights Malawi: Information and Communication in Rural Communities. This post features our research into the digital lives of rural communities in northern, central, and southern Malawi.

  9. “S3” Site Selection System: A Data-Driven Decision-Making Tool for Effective Engagement. CDA’s S3 tool delivers a data-informed approach to determining, “How can we be certain we are targeting the right communities?”

  10. DFID’s Digital Strategy: What Does it Mean for DAI? Rather than simply reading and reviewing DFID’s digital strategy when it launched in early 2018, we wanted to understand the impacts of the strategy at the project level. To get a sense of some of the impacts, we interviewed key project staff.

Stay tuned for what 2019 brings. We will continue to use Digital@DAI to investigate emerging trends in digital technologies for global development, hold conversations with some of the field’s foremost experts, and deliver informative and engaging content to you each week.

Thank you for reading and have a happy new year.