The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the importance of digital technologies in enabling economic growth, entrepreneurship, digital inclusion and the capacity to respond quickly to new challenges in a time of unprecedented crisis. It has revealed the shortcomings of many systems, but also accelerated the pace of digital transformation of economies at large. Many countries are struggling to close the digital divide and become innovation-driven economies.

The Americas region is facing different realities regarding the evolution of innovation performances, coupled with some significant challenges: brain drain, insufficient resources, lack of adequate training and education in ICT-centric innovation and — in some cases— insufficient infrastructure. At the same time, the region has many good practices and examples tackling and overcoming those challenges that can be used to accelerate digital transformation and serve as a basis for better policies in countries where gaps have been identified.

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