Today at the Global DPI Summit, Africa.com conducted on-the-spot chats. Robert Opp, Chief Digital Officer at the United Nations Development Programme, guides global efforts to make digital tools work for the world’s most vulnerable people. Between sessions at the Global DPI Summit in Cape Town, he spoke with Africa.com about turning DPI into a true public good. From open-source platforms that cut costs for governments to ethical data trusts that protect privacy, Opp lays out a clear playbook for Africa to build inclusive, resilient digital systems that leave no one offline.
Robert Opp is the Chief Digital Officer of the United Nations Development Programme, the United Nations’ global sustainable development organization working across 170 countries globally. UNDP adopted its second Digital Strategy in 2022, which sets out a vision to create a world in which digital is an empowering force for people and planet. Rob leads the agency’s digital transformation, an organization-wide effort, to accelerate achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals and ensure no one is left behind.
Under his leadership, UNDP’s Chief Digital Office supports more than 120 countries in building open, inclusive and rights-based digital transformations. It also brings expertise, insights and lessons from the country-level to inform global digital policy, to ensure that technologies, including digital public infrastructure and artificial intelligence accelerate sustainable development. Robert also leads UNDP’s own internal digital transformation effort. Prior to this role, Robert served as Director of the Innovation and Change Management Division within the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) where he established an in-house ‘Zero Hunger’ innovation accelerator and created an award-winning crowdfunding smartphone app, ShareTheMeal.
