GDDF 2023 is different from other online ICT4D events. We are committed to community-driven sessions that explore digital development challenges and opportunities with four key benefits:

- Digital Development Focus: Explore the long-term challenges to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals and opportunities to collectively build an open, inclusive, and secure digital ecosystem for a safer, more prosperous future for us all.

- Peer Connections: Join your friends and collaborators from around the world and meet tech and development entrepreneurs with emerging ideas, as well as the donors and partners working with them – and you – to responsibly leverage technology solutions for greater impact.

- Your Ideas: Share your experiences and insights with thousands of other digital development professionals in exciting presentations, lively discussions, and personal conversations across multiple fora.

- New Experiences: Expand your concept of an ICT4D conference by joining innovative sessions using emerging tools, music, and virtual worlds to improve on physical interactions with your personal and professional peers.

GDDF 2023 will continue to remove barriers to the inclusion of participants from low- and middle-income countries by providing free admission for all, and include:

- Sessions spanning the globe on April 26 & 27, featuring your peers at the cutting edge of technology and development in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Europe, and the Americas.
- Free participation in exciting, compelling, relevant sessions on TechChange‘s online learning platform.
- Inspiring experiences and results from innovative projects that achieve development goals by the creative use of new and emerging technologies.

We are focusing on three key areas of digital development – exploring transformative questions, industry-defining discussion, new voices, creative ideas for each area:

- Emerging Technologies: Do the risks of generative AI outweigh its benefits? Where are we with quantum computing? Are blockchains still relevant to developing countries? Will sensors and Internet-of-Things improve geospatial data accuracy? Can 5G bridge last mile digital divides? How can emerging tech be useful in the most challenging settings? Who is iterating on the leading edge?

- Locally-led Development: Where are the innovative locally-created digital solutions? What role do global tech companies play? How can digital development harness local digital ecosystems? What does locally-led ICT4D mean for international development? Who is successful with local digital solutions? How can digital development foster greater diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility?

- Climate Change: What are innovative climate tech solutions? How do we respond to this mega-threat today? Where are digital development practitioners contributing to climate adaptation? How can we measure impact? Who is helping people mitigate change? What is working? What are they learning & doing?