Powering the Digit 'All . Girls in Energy Village for Digital Inclusion #unga 81

The world is building a digital future. Artificial intelligence is reshaping industries. Smart energy systems are transforming how communities generate, distribute, and consume power. Satellite technology is extending connectivity to the last mile. Data analytics is enabling decisions that were previously impossible. Digital platforms are creating markets, opportunities, and communities that transcend geography. And yet, for the majority of the world's population — the girls, young women, and communities of the Global South who will be most profoundly shaped by the digital transformation — this future is being built without them, for them, and frequently over them. The digital economy's most powerful tools are being deployed in communities that have no reliable electricity to power them, no technical training to operate them, no governance frameworks to protect them, and no ownership stake in the systems that are redefining their lives. This is not an oversight. It is a structural failure — and it demands a structural response. "Powering the Digit-All Future: Girls in Energy Village for Digital Inclusion in the Global South" is that response. This side event, convened by DoTheDream Youth Development Initiative (DoTheDream YDI) in co-organisation is affiliate Side event of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) at the margins of the 81st United Nations General Assembly, presents the Girls in Energy Village as the most comprehensive, community-validated, and globally recognised model to be operating in the Global South for addressing the energy-digital nexus — the structural intersection of energy poverty and digital exclusion — in a way that places girls and young women,heforshe not at the receiving end of the digital economy, but at its absolute frontline as designers, builders, operators, and leaders. The title of this event is deliberate. Digit-All — not digital. All. The commitment encoded in this event is not to a digital future for some. It is to a digital future that is genuinely, structurally, and irreversibly for all — including the girls in rural Nigeria who are maintaining mini-grid infrastructure, the young women in Lagos who are learning AI literacy through the Girls in Energy Digital Learning Hub, and the communities across the African continent and the broader Global South whose energy poverty is the primary barrier between them and the digital economy that is redefining the 21st century.