Digital economies at global margins

This book emerges in a moment of changing connectivity at the world’s economic margins. In Manila, Manchester, Mogadishu, the banlieues of Marseille, and everywhere in between, the world is becoming digital, digitized, and digitally mediated at an astonishing pace. Most of the world’s wealthy have long been digitally connected, but the world’s poor and economically marginal have not been enrolled in digital networks until relatively recently. In only five years (2012–2017), over one billion people became new Internet users (ITU 2016). In 2017, Internet users became a majority of the world’s population. The networking of humanity is thus no longer confined to a few economically prosperous parts of the world. For the first time in history, we are creating a truly global and accessible communication network.