South Asia is home to a staggering 57% of the world’s offline population. In five South Asian economies—Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and India—over 50% of the population remains offline.

The APNIC Foundation this year scaled up its Afghanistan project to include the Pakistan and the Maldives The new project – Digital Leap South Asia – has already onboarded 61 Internet professionals from across these economies (in some cases diaspora now living elsewhere), around a third of them women.
The principle behind the project is simple: strengthening the Internet in these regions means strengthening the people who run it, because you can’t build or even maintain infrastructure without people to make it work.

The project will be discussed in further detail at the upcoming Asia Pacific Regional Internet Governance Forum (APrIGF) 2024 conference in Taiwan. Register and join the discussion! The session will be held 21 August 2024, 2pm to 3pm (Taiwan time/ UTC+8:00).

Pictured is Lima Madomi, a participant in the Digital Leap South Asia project, speaking at a recent event.

• APrIGF Session link.
• APrIGF registration page.
• The Digital Leap South Asia project page.