Connectivity Is Key: How Smart Villages Address Global Challenges Of Rural Communities

Digitalisation and connectivity are crucial to ensuring rural areas are attractive places to live and work, and securing their future prosperity, according to global experts speaking during Expo 2020’s Urban and Rural Development Week. 

“In today’s world, digital connectivity is as vital an infrastructure as water supply,” said Dubravka Šuica, Vice-President of the European Commission and European Commissioner for Democracy and Demography.

“In a variety of ways, rural areas are our source of life. Rural areas provide our food security. Rural areas provide us with biodiversity. They are the basis for a green and sustainable economic development. They also provide us with many renewable resources,” she said at the Rural areas in 2040: Addressing global challenges of rural areas with Smart Villages event, organised by the 2021 Slovenian Presidency of the Council of the European Union (EU).

“We need a robust policy approach to close the gaps for rural areas and to harness their potential. We need to connect our rural areas with their surrounding areas and also with the cities in a sustainable way. This will help facilitate business creation.”

While focusing on the EU’s Long Term Vision for Rural Areas, Šuica stressed the need for a global, participatory approach to creating stronger, more connected, resilient, prosperous rural areas.

“Our rural areas are a hive of activity and a source of tremendous vitality and renewal. We must embrace and enhance their attractive, vibrant and dynamic character,” she said.

“The world itself is a village. So, while, of course, the Vision focuses on EU territories, our rural areas share challenges and opportunities with many other rural areas across the globe. With this Vision, there is enormous potential for an exchange and sharing of best practices across our global village, for our global village.”

Matic Volk, Commissioner General of the Republic of Slovenia, Expo 2020 Dubai, said: “Smart villages focus on many new technological solutions and smart agriculture. For example, digital platforms connect farmers and consumers to enable a short supply chain. We also need connectivity to develop tourism, which brings new jobs into rural areas.”

During the Urbanisation as catalyst for development discussion, part of the Urban and Rural Development Business Forum held at Dubai Exhibition Centre (DEC), Honourable Tatjana Matić, Minister of Trade, Tourism, and Telecommunications, Serbia, discussed how the Serbian government is working with the private sector to develop broadband infrastructure in the most rural areas. Hon Matić said: “Today, more and more people want to go somewhere but not in the big cities. They want to travel to the rural areas, but they want to be connected. They want to have digital services.”

During Population Shifts: Balancing Urban and Rural Development, Sanjay Dutt, Joint Chairman, FICCI Real Estate Committee, Managing Director & CEO, Tata Realty and Infrastructure Limited revealed how digitalisation has enabled India to leapfrog from having practically no internet in rural areas to widespread mobile coverage, connecting the rural economy to the national grid of the economy.

Dutt said: “Even the poorest person can afford a smartphone and connect with the national grid of the government. Look at the drive of the COVID-19 vaccination, all controlled through one app across the country: Getting more than one billion people vaccinated is quite a challenge in itself – digitalisation is one key initiative.”

The consequences of digitalisation have also had a huge impact on the agriculture sector, Dutt added: “Who would have thought that farmers can actually go online and sell their stock to a global multinational corporation, instead of going to a local marketplace and carrying their produce, which will often get destroyed because of lack of infrastructure and facilities? Having a strong internet of things and policy reforms has made a huge difference.”

Technology and artificial intelligence (AI) are key to driving the digitalisation of rural economies. “AI and other digital technologies can help us face the demographic, economic and environmental challenges of the agriculture sector. AI and robotics can improve efficiency and economic and environmental sustainability. They can help make rural living, smart villages and farming more attractive to younger generations,” Šuica said.

AI and other technologies can also support older generations in rural communities. Šuica added: “Indeed, ageing can be the spark for creating new developments. We must grasp the economic opportunities and the innovative character of the silver economy. I am thinking here about innovative technologies, products and services, including in the health sector, that the silver economy is capable of generating.”

The opportunities and challenges of smart villages – a concept co-initiated and co-created by the EU and others, about citizens taking ownership and responsibility – were discussed by global industry players, institutional representatives and politicians at Expo 2020 Dubai’s Terra – The Sustainability Pavilion on the second day of Urban & Rural Development Week, in co-operation with UN-Habitat and The Executive Council of Dubai, as part of the Programme for People and Planet.