The UN General Assembly held the High-Level Meeting on the Midterm Review of the New Urban Agenda on the 16-17 July 2026. High on the agenda here, and at the World Urban Forum 13 earlier this year, was the global housing crisis – centring adequate housing as a key focus area for sustainable urban development. This blog highlights role of digital technologies for the housing agenda.
Housing the world
As cities grow, so do the challenges. Today, rising costs, displacement, limited supply, and insufficient upgrading of existing homes and informal settlements are driving an unprecedented housing crisis. UN Habitat reports that up to 3.4 billion people lack adequate housing worldwide, including more than 1.1 billion people living in informal settlements, the highest level ever reported. Against this backdrop, when the World Urban Forum was held in Baku earlier this summer, focus was on the global housing crisis through the theme Housing the world: Safe and resilient cities and communities.
In reality, housing projects only succeed when they are integrated to the wider city — linked to essential services, mobility, opportunity, and employment. Without these connections, people and households are more likely to face social and economic exclusion. Access to basic services such as water, sanitation, waste management, sustainable energy, and transport are essential to creating safe, healthy, and liveable neighbourhoods. This blog explores where digital technologies can support adequate housing by improving service delivery for vulnerable communities.
Digital solutions for liveable cities – bridging the service gap
Urbanisation has long been linked to higher incomes and improved living standards. However, cities only unlock these benefits when they provide the basic services and infrastructure people need to thrive. Where fewer than half of urban residents can access essential services, increasing urban concentration slows economic growth. In African cities, where more than half of the urban population lives in informal settlements, expanding access to basic services remains one of the most significant challenges to inclusive and sustainable growth.
In many fast-growing cities across Africa and Asia, a striking contradiction is emerging. Digital connectivity has expanded rapidly in urban areas – adults in rural areas are 25% less likely to use mobile internet than those in cities. But access to basic urban services is still lagging far behind in many areas, with one in three urban residents globally lacking access to at least one essential service. This has created a reality where people may own smartphones, use mobile money and the internet, but still need to walk to collect clean water and cook with polluting fuels in their homes. This growing service gap exists when essential urban services are unaffordable, unconnected, unreliable and unaccountable, unplanned and unsafe. Digital solutions, from the use of mobile big data for urban planning, to sensors detecting disruptions in service delivery – can improve these solutions and bridge the gaps.
Digital and mobile-enabled services alone is not enough. Their impact depends on the wider conditions that allow them to scale and integrate into urban systems. Below we explore two enabling conditions – i) a stronger digital ecosystem that connects energy, connectivity, and digital financial services, and ii) policy recognition through public-private partnerships – that are critical to making digital solutions work for adequate housing.
Making services work – the digital ecosystem
Digitally enabled public services function within a wider digital ecosystem. When households gain access to energy, connectivity, and digital financial services together, the impact can be transformative. For example:
- Reliable energy → extends productive hours and powers devices
- Connectivity → enables access to information, services, and markets
- Mobile money → enables payments, savings, and credit histories
Critically, these services are mutually reinforcing, creating a multiplier effect on income, resilience, and service uptake. The following show how each relates to the wider digital ecosystem:
Reliable electricity – turning to Productive Use of Energy
An estimated 447 million people who are officially electrified still do not use electricity, due to unreliable supply, high costs, and limited access to appliances and services. Digital systems are becoming the backbone of modern energy access. Connectivity, mobile payments, smart metering, remote monitoring, and digital platforms make it easier to finance appliances, manage systems, track performance, and coordinate electricity flows. As a result, energy access and digital access are increasingly intertwined, shaping who can use electricity productively, participate in new energy markets, and benefit from reliable service over time.
Connectivity – Closing the usage gap
96% of the global population lives in an area with mobile broadband coverage, providing a real opportunity for digitally enabled services to reach vulnerable communities and scale. However, while mobile broadband coverage continues to expand, digital divides still remain and today, only 77% of the population living in urban areas are mobile internet subscribers. This usage gap is driven by barriers such as unaffordable devices and limited digital skills and literacy. Addressing these barriers would enable digital solutions to reach more households and subsequently scale to improve overall urban service delivery.
Digital Financial Services – the expansion of Mobile Money
The spread of mobile money throughout Sub Saharan Africa, and increasingly in Asia, has been a key enabler of digital payments and financial inclusion. There are currently 2.3 billion registered mobile money accounts, with a current transactional value of $2.1 trillion. For example, the pay-as-you-go financing model has allowed low-income consumers to access energy, clean cooking solutions and other assets in an affordable way. Mobile money services have been key to their success, allowing for customers to pay in instalments though their mobile phones. Additionally, digital payments also increases financial inclusion as it enables for users to track payments and create credit profiles which in extension can provide access to loans and other financial services.
Policy recognition – Public Private Partnerships
Mobile connectivity has enabled digital solutions that improve the affordability, reliability and sustainability of essential urban services. Many of the solutions we are looking for already exist, but they often exist in isolation. For them to function properly, we need a wider collaboration between actors and interoperability between systems.
Innovative utility companies and public‑sector entities increasingly rely on public–private partnerships (PPPs) to address urban challenges. When structured well, PPPs can combine the technology, agility and innovation of start‑ups with the scale, service mandates and infrastructure of public authorities. This can be particularly beneficial for low‑income and underserved populations living in informal settlements.
One example of this type of partnerships comes from Freetown in Sierra Leone. The population of Freetown generates approximately 550 tonnes of solid waste per day, but only about 30% of it is disposed safely. From a housing perspective not being able to dispose waste properly can have a huge effect on living conditions.
Freetown Waste Transformer’s partnership with the Freetown City Council
Former GSMA Innovation Fund grantee Freetown Waste Transformers is a digitised waste management service based out of Freetown. Its DortiBox waste app allows businesses and households (including in informal settlements) to request organic waste collection which is subsequently converted into clean energy – helping to divert the amount of waste going to landfills or discarded in the local environment.
The DortiBox app was recently adopted by Freetown City Council as the city’s official digital infrastructure for solid waste management, and the company secured a five-year municipal concession covering more than 15,000 registered customers and requiring use of its weekly collection service. Freetown City Council has prioritised waste management in their Climate Action Strategy 2022-2030, through which they aim to leverage advanced technologies to optimise waste collection and processing. This type of policy recognition opens up opportunities for partnerships like the one with Freetown Waste Transformers.
In this example, digital tools, working through public–private coordination, helped extend essential services to underserved communities – exemplifying that digital innovation can support more inclusive urban development when backed by policy recognition and partnership.
A (Baku) call to action
One of the main outcomes of World Urban Forum 13 was the development of The Baku Call to Action. The document highlights housing as part of a broader urban system and calls for a multi-sector, multi-actor approach. However, digital technology is a critical enabler which remains underexplored in this conversation.
To realise the vision set out at WUF13 and by the Baku Call to Action, governments, donors, and city authorities must treat digital technologies not as a nice to have, but as a significant building block in the development of adequate housing and urban systems.
Policy makers should:
- Recognise digital infrastructure as core urban infrastructure, not a parallel system
- Integrate digital solutions into housing and basic service delivery frameworks
- Scale public–private partnerships to expand proven models
- Embrace the advancement of emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence and explore possible use cases, in particular in the area of urban planning
As cities continue to grow and technologies continue to advance, closing the service gap will depend on treating digital technology as essential infrastructure for inclusive urban development.
The questions explored in this blog form part of a broader conversation about the future of energy access.
Our latest report on the Digital and Policy Enablement of Productive Use of Energy, examines how digital technologies are reshaping the way electricity is planned, financed and used across both grid and decentralised energy systems. Read the report here
This initiative is funded by the UK government’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) through its Global Research and Technology Development portfolio and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) and is supported by the GSMA and its members.
