Paper short abstract:

Big Data for Development (BD4D) technology enabled data-driven innovations can revolutionalise the global inequality reduction research and practice. However, technical and ethical challenges in implementing BD4D can amplify or even cause development discourses. This paper discusses such issues.

Paper long abstract:

The confluence of trends of the increasing migration of socio-economic activities to the Internet and the declining cost of data collection, storage and processing, are leading to the generation and use of huge volumes of data. The "big data" has become an infrastructural resource. Like physical infrastructure can enable beneficial spillovers to facilitate trade and social exchanges, data spillovers can also open up significant growth opportunities, or generate benefits across society in ways that could not be foreseen when the data were created. This includes benefits from research and the development of new products, processes, organisational methods and markets - a phenomenon known as data-driven innovation (DDI).

Big Data for Development (BD4D) technologies have revolutionalised the way we tackle global inequality issues in healthcare, education, and agriculture; facilitated the alleviation of poverty; and helped to tackle humanitarian crises and violent conflicts. However, there are also serious technical and ethnical challenges in implementing the BD4D. Without careful application, such technologies can bring adverse impact in amplifying or even causing discourses in both global inequality research and practice.

This paper reviews the impact of BD4D on the development of international societies, highlights important challenges and pressing issues such as efficient data acquisition and sharing, establishing of context and veracity of a dataset, and ensuring appropriate privacy. This paper argues that interdisciplinary efforts must be encouraged and financially incentivised so that BD4D can be analysed with the right perspectives and ethics that help to shape the future global inequality agenda.