USD Liquidity and ICT4D/AI4D in Tier 5 Countries
ICT4D therefore needs to build the material and institutional foundations of participation in the global digital economy. These include affordable broadband, reliable electricity, mobile financial services, digital identity where appropriate, cybersecurity, digital literacy, and sustainable models for maintaining public digital services.
US Privilege or Global Benefit? The Future of the Dollar as the AI4D Financial Infrastructure
The USD is neither merely an instrument of American domination nor simply a neutral global utility. It is a mutually beneficial but politically asymmetric infrastructure. Its network effects generate substantial benefits for participants around the world, while its institutional structure gives the United States unusual capacity to restrict participation when geopolitical relationships break down.
BRICS in the USD-Tiered Global Economy
BRICS remains deeply integrated into the USD/Eurodollar system as both users and (in China’s case) major suppliers/recyclers of dollars. De-dollarization efforts have produced meaningful bilateral progress, especially with Russia, but have not displaced the dollar’s systemic role.
The New ICT4D: AI, Stablecoins, and the Infrastructure of Global E-Commerce and Financial Liquidity
The central ICT4D question consequently changes. It is no longer how do we give developing countries access to AI? It asks, “How do we build the human and institutional capacity to turn global computational and financial connectivity into local productive capacity?”
ICT4D and the Geography of AI Computation
The geography of computation is ultimately a geography of opportunity. The central development challenge is no longer simply getting people online. It is ensuring that they can capture data, represent their own realities, retrieve knowledge, access computation, connect tools, coordinate intelligent systems, and convert computational capacity into meaningful action.
The Cost of Fragmentation: What We Lose When Multilateralism Gives Way to Multipolarity
Multipolarity concerns the distribution of power among states; multilateralism concerns the institutional mechanisms through which states coordinate. A world can therefore be multipolar and still be strongly multilateral. The danger is not multipolarity itself. The danger is allowing political multipolarity to become institutional fragmentation.
How Developing Countries Will Access US Stablecoins
Citation APA (7th Edition) Pennings, A.J. (2026, Jul 28) How Developing Countries Will Access US Stablecoins. apennings.com https://apennings.com/uncategorized/how-developing-countries-will-access-us-stablecoins/ Introduction This post covers topics that my students and I have been addressing in a course called EST 230 – Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) for Sustainable Development that I have been teaching for the last six […]
The $100 Trillion Question: Treasury-Backed Digital Dollars and a Democratic Political Economy
Citation APA (7th Edition) Pennings, A.J. (2026, Jul 27) The $100 Trillion Question: Treasury-Backed Digital Dollars and a Democratic Political Economy. apennings.com https://apennings.com/global-e-commerce/the-100-trillion-question-treasury-backed-digital-dollars-and-a-democratic-political-economy/ Introduction As the United States national debt accelerates past historical milestones, traditional economic orthodoxy, “goldbugs,” and manipulative politicians continue to issue dire warnings of imminent fiscal insolvency, surging bond yields, and currency […]
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Professor (full) at State University of New York (SUNY) Korea since 2016. Research Professor for Stony Brook University. Moved to Austin, Texas in August 2012 to join the Digital Media Management program at St. Edwards University. Spent the previous decade on the faculty at New York University teaching and researching information systems, digital economics, and global political economy
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anthony.pennings@sunykorea.ac.kr
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