Ayden Férdeline — ILF Ambassador Final Report

I have now wrapped up my Interledger research ambassadorship. Since my last update in November 2024, I traveled to Riyadh for the 19th annual United Nations Internet Governance Forum (IGF). At the IGF, I socialized the working paper that the Dynamic Coalition on Digital Financial Inclusion has been working on throughout 2024. This document will continue to evolve, and my ambition post-ambassadorship is to continue this work and to launch the final version of these principles at a high-level event in 2025.

Dynamic Coalition on Digital Financial Inclusion

The Dynamic Coalition on Digital Financial Inclusion serves as a deliberative space for policy discussions on digital financial inclusion within the IGF framework, designed to develop evidence-informed recommendations that reflect the perspectives of a diverse, multistakeholder group. My role as chair of this working group has been to act as a rapporteur, facilitating dialogue, capturing insights, and helping the coalition reach consensus on different topics.

Since my last update, the coalition has met virtually to prepare a working draft Statement of Principles, which you can read here. I then presented this work at the IGF in Riyadh last month alongside Briana Marbury, the President and CEO of the Interledger Foundation, during a lightning talk on December 15th.

While the IGF was not without hiccups – we had to postpone one of our two IGF sessions – it was nonetheless an opportunity to meet with distinguished delegates and to seek input on our draft work product. The Dynamic Coalition is convening next on February 13, 2025 to review the comments we have received from stakeholders in government, the private sector, and civil society. We plan to revise the Statement of Principles based on this input, and to ready them for a high-level launch event in Oslo in June for the 20th annual IGF.

A huge thank you to all our contributors, especially those from the Interledger community, who actively participated in this process. I will continue to post on this forum about the future of the Dynamic Coalition and our 2025 work plan, as there will be new opportunities to engage with this working group in the coming months.

2025 and the Future of Internet Governance

This year will be a pivotal one for Internet governance. Two decades after the adoption of the Tunis Agenda for the Information Society in 2005, the United Nation’s WSIS+20 process will reflect on the progress made and outline priorities for the next decade. We will also see whether the IGF’s mandate is extended beyond Oslo, or if it will be disbanded.

Since the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in 2005, the Internet has transformed dramatically, with the number of users growing from 500 million to over 5 billion. Emerging technologies like AI, 5G, and satellite Internet now dominate global discourse, while digital public infrastructure and financial inclusion have become central to discussions of sustainable development. Given this, it is difficult for me to imagine that the UN would see no value in renewing the IGF’s mandate and would abdicate the leadership it has already shown in this arena, but stranger things have happened. The WSIS+20 process, which will culminate in a resolution by the UN General Assembly in December 2025 and, I hope, resourcing to implement it, will likely address critical issues such as:

• Bridging digital divides within and between nations.
• Strengthening cybersecurity and safeguarding human rights online.
• Managing emerging technologies and the geopolitical tensions they create.
• Promoting digital public infrastructure and online payment systems (not necessarily interoperable payment protocols).

What we do this year will plant the seeds for the next decade of Internet governance, setting the stage for WSIS+30 in 2035. One of my focuses in 2025 is to engage in processes, and to persuade other stakeholders, to align the 11 WSIS Action Lines more closely with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and to show that there are solutions that already exist, and which could be scaled up, to address these important issues. Without getting too political, I am afraid bipartisanship is a thing of the past in some democracies, and some dominant state funders of public interest technology projects may be scaling back their support of Internet freedom initiatives. Non-state and non-market actors need to find a way to communicate how such initiatives are not a zero-sum game. For now, I am leaning in on the Global Digital Compact (GDC), adopted in September 2024, as a framework to guide my engagement efforts, as the GDC recognizes that the future of humankind is digital and based on international cooperation and solidarity.

What’s Next?

I’m joining the team at the Interledger Foundation as Lead, Public Policy and Government Affairs. In this role, I hope to continue building out initiatives which bring lawmakers, policymakers, and regulators into direct dialogue with the Interledger community to demonstrate how responsible, interoperable payment systems can and do drive digital financial inclusion. And I will continue to serve as rapporteur for the Dynamic Coalition on Digital Financial Inclusion. In 2025, the Dynamic Coalition’s focus will be on:

1. Refining and finalizing the Statement of Principles for a high-level launch at the IGF in Oslo (June 2025).
2. Engaging with other IGF Dynamic Coalitions to build synergies and expand our impact.
3. Building out a broader coalition of like-minded organizations, collectives, and initiatives to sign on to this Statement of Principles and to begin operationalizing them.
4. Contributing to the broader WSIS+20 discussions, ensuring that digital financial inclusion becomes a core element of global digital policy frameworks.