The 50 most critical technological breakthroughs required for sustainable global development

Dec 5, 2014
2 min read

A new report from the Institute for Globally Transformative Technologies of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has published its 50 most critical innovation breakthrough that is needed to revolutionize the development effort.

As stated in their report, through the history of international development, a small number of breakthrough technologies have had transformative impact: the polio vaccine; the new seed varieties which launched the Asian Green Revolution; anti-retroviral drugs which appear to have rendered HIV/AIDS a chronic and manageable disease; and more recently, the M-PESA mobile payments platform.

Such major breakthroughs are rare. The truth is that far too much of the effort is focused on incremental technologies which—despite compelling narratives, significant funding, and considerable media hype—fail to reach any reasonable scale or impact.

Why? Because there is limited broad understanding of the underlying issues, and the role of technology. Decision-makers—donors, social impact investors, program officers, employees in government agencies, practitioners working in NGOs—often make their decisions without adequate information or analysis.

Among these innovations, one can find the need for:

Biometric ID systems, linking birth registry, land title registry, financial services, education history, medical history, and other information critical for ICT enabled services.
Affordable (under $50) smartphones that support full-fledged Internet services, and need limited electricity to charge.
A complete cure drug for Malaria that eliminates all malarial parasites, at every stage of the lifecycle, from the human body.
Fully integrated single diagnostic platforms that eliminate the need for individual platforms for separate disease conditions.
A new method for desalination: scalable, low cost, and using renewable energy.
‘Smart’ electronic textbooks which dynamically adapt content for different skill levels, languages and other user specific needs.
A portable toolkit for agricultural extension workers and livestock veterinarians.
Low cost, distributed monitoring sensors to identify environmental toxins and their concentrations.
A simple point-of-use, low cost DNA-based rape kit.