By Muhammad Eyinfunjowo

Every year, World Development Information Day reminds us that access to information is essential for advancing international development. Yet, despite more than 5.3 billion people using the internet by early 2024, an estimated 2.6 billion people remained offline globally, while misinformation and low information integrity continued to undermine people’s ability to access trusted, reliable, and actionable information.

This presents an important challenge at a time when governments, NGOs, and purpose-driven organisations continue investing billions of dollars into solutions addressing climate change, food insecurity, public health, education, and youth employment.

Around the world, these organisations are creating new technologies, generating research, funding innovations, and designing programmes intended to improve livelihoods and address some of society’s most pressing challenges. However, the success of many of these solutions depends not only on the quality of the innovation developed, but also on whether people understand, trust, and ultimately adopt it. Innovation creates solutions, but effective communications help people adopt them.

This has become increasingly important as digital platforms shape how people discover information. By early 2024, more than 5.3 billion people were using the internet worldwide, while social media had become one of the primary ways people access news, learn new skills, and engage with communities. Digital platforms have created unprecedented opportunities for organisations to educate and engage audiences at scale.

However, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) estimated that around 2.6 billion people remained offline in 2023, while many more lacked access to reliable, practical and actionable information.Bridging this information gap is therefore becoming just as important as developing new technologies, funding new programmes, or conducting new research to. An innovation that remains poorly understood, inaccessible, or mistrusted cannot create the impact it was designed to achieve.

Traditionally, organisations have measured the success of digital communications through awareness, impressions, website traffic, and lead generation. While these indicators remain useful, they reveal little about whether communications are helping people improve their lives.

Development organisations should increasingly measure success through behavioural outcomes such as programme participation, technology adoption, skills acquisition, and community engagement. For organisations focused on development, the key question should no longer be how many people saw a message, but how many people acted because of it.

Achieving this requires a different approach to communications, such as utilising storytelling across available digital media platforms to translate complex scientific or policy information into language that encourages understanding, trust, and action.

With nearly 44 per cent of workers’ core skills expected to change within the next five years, making reliable career information accessible across websites, social media, and other digital platforms will also help ensure workers understand emerging career opportunitiesand acquire the skills needed to succeed in them.

Thanks to the advancement of digital media, a single solution or message can now be delivered across articles, videos, podcasts, webinars, newsletters and social media, allowing audiences to engage with information through the platforms they use most.

Different formatscan guide people through a journey—from discovering the problem, understanding the solution, learning practical skills, and ultimately taking action.This transmedia approach is valuable for organisations focused on international develop ent, health, food security, and science and technology, where changing behaviour is often just as important as raising awareness.

Organisations are already demonstrating the impact of this approach. Digital Green, for example, has used farmer videos, community screenings, mobile platforms, and digital advisory services across multiple countries like India, Ethiopia, and Kenya to help over 100,000 smallholder farmers adopt agricultural innovationsand improve their communities.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the World Health Organization and national public health agencies also combined websites, social media, video explainers and community messaging to improve vaccine awareness and counter misinformation, showing how integrated communications can influence public behaviour.

As the world becomes increasingly digital, organisations should begin treating digital communications as a core component of innovation rather than simply a promotionalfunction.The future of digital communications willbe defined by organisations using it to expand opportunities, accelerate the adoption of innovation, and create lasting social impact.

Ultimately, World Development Information Day is a timely reminder that information only contributes to development when people can access, understand, and act upon it.

Muhammad Eyinfunjowo is a global communications and content marketing specialist.