IT for Change marked its Silver Jubilee on July 19, 2025—a momentous milestone for us; a journey not only in organization-building but in co-shaping what is seen today as the field of digital justice.
We commemorated the organizational landmark with a befitting convening, Our Digital Futures Fest. A coming together of community and conviction, the series of events at the fest was about looking back with thankfulness, so we can look to the future with hope and resolve. Our peers and mentors were there with our wonderful founding team members and precious families. We recommitted ourselves to the solidarities that have brought us this far and opened our hearts to new generations of thought and thought leaders.
When we started out in 2000, we were one of the few critical voices in what was an emergent half-idea—information and communications technologies for development (ICTD). A mouthful to describe experiments that would—in two decades—spawn multidisciplinary specializations. The exuberance in the early 2000s was palpable. The internet (spelt then with a capital I) seemed like magic, which it undoubtedly was. Pundits predicted a revolution—a future of plenty, where markets, governance, knowledge systems, societal exchange, all were poised for upheaval. In a world where neoliberal globalization would eventually meet ‘Californian ideology’ (a curious mix of market economics and the freedoms of hippie artisanship that transmutated into the familiar Big Tech we know today), the arc of digital innovation became the new toy, a weapon for 21st-century political economy. Freedom, community, sharing, and self-expression were getting a makeover that the early unicorns were brokering through the platform economy.
Today, as we witness an internet dream gone wrong, it is clear that footloose digital capitalism has taken over our materiality and our imagination. For those dressed in Wall Street suits (as Saskia Sassen famously wrote), the frictionless takeover of the globe presents a predatory opportunity. Big Tech is truly smart; it knows how exactly to extract its pound of flesh, striking a bargain with the state to remain unshackled. Today’s AI-led economy lacks baselines for human rights and justice. Its value chains are a measure of neo-colonial extraction — the relentless datafication of bodies, labor, knowledge and lifeworlds. We sit at a turn where ‘agentic AI’ is on offer—the sell is so loud that our cognitive surrender is near-complete even as the usurpation of our social-intellectual commons, complete. The Big Tech-Big Brother complex seems to be tomorrow’s totalizing political order.
For IT for Change, this shifting terrain has meant that our mission and action towards digital justice is no longer fringe. It is at the center of a global crisis of publicness and democracy that our impact and influence in the domain must address. From food security to climate, work and leisure, industrial policy, and global diplomacy, a loss of political directionality is already proving to be costly; people and planet are pushed to the brink. The question for our path ahead is rather straightforward—how do we shape the practice and politics of the digital transition for equity and human flourishing? Simple question, with no easy answers. But there is power in the company you keep. What we are learning from our allies—social movements, worker cooperatives, young feminists, technologists, and local governments, is that another digital world is possible, and it cannot be left to the oligarchy.
As a forerunner in the field, we can say with pride that our contributions have been ahead of the curve.
So, where to from here?
This year, we created the time and space to also take a pause and reflect on our organizational mission and strategy, deliberating upon the uncertainties of the external context. We talked about the approaches that would keep us relevant, and the internal readiness needed for the years to come. The mission of digital justice has to be defined and pursued anew constantly by being ever-alive to the shifting winds of change. We do not know what lies on the horizon beyond generative AI—there’s no crystal ball for that. But our cookbook has stood the test of time – new tech might come and go, but there is no way other than to question runaway power, envision alternatives, build and sustain solidarities, and be seen and recognized for the ethos we wear proudly.
We are grateful to all those who have accompanied us on this journey, reposing trust and confidence in our capability. Across generations, our team members have shown what shifting the status quo means, and demonstrated how social sector organizations must hold themselves to the yardstick of public purpose. We continue on this path with optimism and self-reflexivity, cautious that we stay on course—and going back to Audre Lorde’s haunting question (which we paraphrase)—not becoming somebody else on the way to ourselves.
With gratitude and hope,
Directors
IT for Change