Digital Inclusion in an Unequal World: An Emancipatory Manifesto

by Tim Unwin

Why do so many efforts to use digital tech to help the world’s poor ultimately end in failure? This book provides a detailed critique of previous theory and practice, whilst also proposing practical and realistic suggestions for good practice.

This book combines longer thematic chapters by Tim Unwin, one of the world’s leading thinkers on ICT for development, with shorter vignettes from other experts across a range of different practical, intellectual, and geographic backgrounds. The book argues that the global geo-politico-economic agendas associated with the use of digital tech in development in late-capitalism raise pressing issues around instrumentalism, individualism, and empowerment. This context drives short-termism and an innovation fetish around current hot topics, such as EdTech, Blockchain, and Artificial Intelligence. The world’s poorest and most marginalised people are failing to benefit from the use of digital technology, whilst the world’s digital barons continue to accrue great wealth. Unwin emphasises the importance of crafting a responsibilities agenda that will shift the dial, enabling practitioners to avoid common pitfalls and transform good intent into good practices. This book is a highly readable guide for the global community of development practitioners, government officials, and civil society organisations involved in delivering digital tech initiatives.

Students from across the fields of international development, computer science, electronic engineering, geography, and economics will also benefit from its expert insights.

Kindle Edition

Expected publication April 2, 2026

About the author

P.T.H. (Tim) Unwin is UNESCO Chair in ICT4D, Director of the ICT4D Collective and Professor of Geography at Royal Holloway, University of London. He also serves as Chair of the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission in the UK, and Academic Advisor and External Examiner for the Institute of Masters of Wine.
From 2001-2004 he led the UK Prime Minister’s Imfundo: Partnership for IT in Education initiative based within the Department for International Development, and from 2007 he was Director and then Senior Advisor to the World Economic Forum’s Partnerships for Education initiative with UNESCO. He was previously Head of the Department of Geography at Royal Holloway, University of London (1999–2001), and has also served as Honorary Secretary of the Royal Geographical Society (with The Institute of British Geographers) (1995-1997).
He has written or edited 15 books, and more than 200 papers and other publications, including "Wine and the Vine" (Routledge, 1991), "The Place of Geography" (Longman, 1992), as well as his edited "Atlas of World Development" (Wiley, 1994) and "A European Geography" (Longman, 1998). His research has taken him to some 25 countries across the world, from Estonia to Sierra Leone, and Ethiopia to Singapore, and he has worked on subjects as diverse as the role of banknotes as expressions of national identity, and the historical-geography of viticulture and the wine trade.
Over the last decade his research has concentrated on information and communication technologies for development (ICT4D), focusing especially on the use of ICTs to support people with disabilities, and to empower out of school youth. His latest collaborative book, entitled simply ICT4D, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2009.
In 2011, he received a Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, UK-China Fellowship for Excellence, and is a Visting Scholar at Peking University. He has also received a Royal Holloway Individual Teaching Award in 2006, and in 2011 received an Apple for the Teacher Award from the Student Union at Royal Holloway.