Christopher Burns Director, Center for Digital Development at USAID

Work experience
Director, Center for Digital Development
Leading a number of technical teams focused on Digital Financial Services, Development Informatics, Digital Inclusion and Geospatial Visualization, and the role they play in driving an inclusive digital economy. The Center for Digital Development, within the U.S. Global Development Lab, offers technical assistance, thought leadership, global alliance development and a vision for effectively integrating digital technologies into International Development for USAID staff, implementing partners and key stakeholders.

Christopher is a former Senior Coordinator, Digital Development for Feed the Future where he was leading a nimble team within USAID's Global Development Lab, and in collaboration with the Bureau for Food Security, to integrate a suite of coordinated digital technologies into the U.S. Feed the Future Initiative. Focus is on the application of digital financial services, affordable connectivity, tenets of digital inclusion, the Principles of Digital Development, the use of real time data and geospatial analysis, and the feasibility of more blue-sky technologies such as low-cost remote sensing and drones for increasing agricultural productivity, farming community incomes, gender equality and nutritional intake. Our work is predicated on the vision of Digital Development by which the digital economy is not yet inclusive enough to allow the most underserved to maximize it for their livelihood wants and needs; and in order to make this happen, public and private actors must work collaboratively to ensure the broader digital ecosystem - policies, infrastructure, enabling services and applications - is designed with the needs of the most underserved in mind.