In a world where connectivity is increasingly recognised as a fundamental right, promising statistics indicate growing levels of access – yet they also show that significant groups remain digitally unconnected. Such a gap becomes even more critical when connectivity plays such a crucial role as an enabler for communities in terms of access to health and education, public services, and economic opportunities.
Why is this happening? Policy and regulation are often cited as major barriers. But for many people, especially those in already marginalised communities, another challenge emerges: sustainable financing. When communities build their own connectivity infrastructure, financing mechanisms remain limited, often inaccessible, or misaligned with their needs. This current moment presents an opportunity – and a necessity – to promote new funding models, diversify sources, and advocate for approaches tailored to the realities of community-centred connectivity initiatives (CCCIs).
A high-level policy dialogue convened in Cape Town during the G20 South African presidency focused on this. Organised by the Association for Progressive Communications (APC), the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO), and the UNESCO, and hosted by the British High Commission, a T20 summit dialogue brought together key voices from across the digital inclusion ecosystem, involving researchers, policy makers, regulators, funders and community leaders.
The side event gathered the voices from researchers, policy makers, regulators, funders and community leaders.
The dialogue focused on unpacking the context of digital inclusion, learning from CCCIs and grassroots solutions, assessing policy and regulatory frameworks and exploring innovative community-driven financing models. From UNESCO, Tawfik Jelassi, assistant director-general for communication and information, shared that “in high-income countries, 93% of people are online. In low-income countries, that number falls to 27%. That is a digital divide.” However, one should also be cautious as regards statistics and the tendency for their misuse in connectivity debates. “We need to distinguish between coverage and actual access. Availability doesn’t guarantee affordability or usability”, said Alessandra Lustrati, head of digital development of FCDO.
In this sense, Fola Odufuwa, country partner of Research ICT Africa, drew on the After Access survey data that help understand why and where connectivity gaps persist. “Less than 40% of Africans are online,” he said, with rural areas being especially underserved. But access alone is not enough; there are structural issues such as the lack of African languages in digital content. Speaking in the same vein, Graziela Castello, sectoral studies coordinator at CETIC.br from Brazil, shared key insights from the 2024 study, Meaningful Connectivity, that identified nine indicators to measure the digital divide, from the quality and cost of connectivity, to access to devices and appropriateness for communities: “[Some] 84% of Brazilians are internet users, but only 22% have meaningful connectivity, dropping to 3% in poor populations,” she informed the gathering.
Alison Gillwald, co-chair of the T20 Task Force on Digital Transformatio, stressed the critical importance of data from the Global South to guide strategies rooted in equity and structural transformation.
Communities are partners
Together with statistics, voices from communities are a first-hand source to know what is relevant to communities, what impact they have, and what sustainability means to them. The stories of B4RN (Broadband for the Rural North), from the United Kingdom, Common Room from Indonesia, and from Zenzeleni Networks, V-NET, Project Isizwe, and AdNotes in South Africa, were shared at the T20 side event, highlighting that community-centred connectivity initiatives respond to local contexts, needs and challenges, in terms of sustainability.
Their experiences also led them to address structural inequities that CCCIs face, like having to bear the same service tax rates as national and global operators, in a "not equal playing field" as Gustaff Iskandar, co-founder and director of Common Room, highlighted.
Even so, CCCIs have proved to be cost-effective and contribute to socioeconomic impact, allowing people to be part of the digital transformation, Carlos Rey-Moreno, who co-leads APC’s community networks initiative, emphasised. “There are some enablers that we have considered over the years: spectrum, licences, investments. When they are there, then you see community networks are thrilling.”
As Doreen Bogdan-Martin, secretary-general of the International Telecommunication Union, pointed out, settled communities should not be seen as beneficiaries, but recognised as partners, and this shift of perspective can provide an opportunity to escalate financing models that support community-based connectivity approaches. This perspective was reinforced by Anriette Esterhuysen, from APC, who reminded that most meaningful advances in digital inclusion have been achieved through partnerships. “This event provides a great opportunity to renew them,” she noted, issuing “a call to action – in business models, in financing, and in collaboration.”
Creating enabling environments
Regulatory and policy frameworks are like railway barriers: they could act as gateways or roadblocks for local solutions to connectivity. The T20 summit dialogue gathered voices that reflected this, and featured two national cases.
In the first, Renata Santoyo from Anatel, Brazil's regulatory agency, described how her country is working to build a more inclusive digital policy framework, with the creation of a multi-stakeholder Community Networks Working Group. “This open dialogue and the clarity of what each stakeholder wants makes a lot of difference,” Santoyo said, enumerating the tangible results already achieved: simplified oversight processes, integrating community networks into Brazil’s Universal Service Fund (USF), and embedding meaningful connectivity principles in national telecom plans.
Regulations and policy making experiences from Brasil and South Africa were shared during the T20 Summit Dialogue
The other case was from South Africa. Councillor Nompucuko Nontombana, representing the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA), stated that the actual framework “does seem to favour big telcos – not by design, but by default.” However she urged CCCIs to take a more active role in engaging with regulators and participating in public consultations.
Bringing a broader policy lens to the discussion, Rob Floyd, director for innovation and digital policy, African Center for Economic Transformation (ACET), outlined three ingredients to foster a supportive ecosystem: informed policy makers, political and technical champions and evidence-based advocacy. “Good stories and solid data inform good policy.” The strong message that emerged was that CCCIs must be empowered not just to build infrastructure but also to tell their stories and back them with data so they can shift perspectives and policies.
Financing digital inclusion – a call to action
Beyond navigating regulatory barriers, in a context where financing becomes critical, CCCIs require diverse, creative and responsive funding models that are aligned with local communities’ unique realities. As the T20 side event made clear, CCCIs do not fit into the mould of traditional investments. They are community-led, often non-profit, operating on a small scale in underserved areas, and as such, require tailored financial mechanisms that recognise their impact beyond profit margins.
The dynamics are defined by how communities address financing and how financiers perceive them in turn. One of the central obstacles is that “CCCIs require much smaller investments than those typically offered by institutional investors. The diversity of actors involved makes it difficult to assess risk or treat them as a standard asset class,” as Brian Vo, chief investment officer, Connect Humanity, pointed out. Moreover, many initiatives are still formalising their operations and lack the business models or financial documentation required to meet conventional investment standards.
Underlying these strategies is a deeper challenge: how the financial sector perceives community-led connectivity. Claude Dorion, expert on finance and social economy, outlined a phased approach that proposes in the short term, to improve data to reduce perceived investment risk; in the medium term, to pilot a dedicated fund for CCCIs and in the long term, to scale proven models regionally. He also highlighted the need for technical and managerial capacity for CCCIs to communicate their social and economic value more effectively. Educating investors to look beyond traditional “return on investments" metrics could be also very beneficial for achieving financing solutions for digital inclusion, he added.
“This is not just a space for dialogue; it’s a platform for action,” said Lustrati from the FCDO and reiterated the importance of aligning with global processes while positioning community perspectives fat the centre. “If we don’t include the voices of those closest to the problem, we’ll never get to the right solutions,” as she put it. Picking up the same strand, Rey-Moreno of APC predicted, “The next big thing is going to be a million small things,” adding, “We need trained local people building their own solutions; but that will only happen if we invest in them.”