A LEAP panel puts digital identity at the centre of inclusion

A panel on the World Tech Stage at LEAP 2026 made an argument that cuts against the usual framing of digital inclusion: the binding constraint is often not connectivity but identity, because a person without a recognised digital identity cannot reach the services that being online is supposed to unlock. The session, titled "Bridging Global Gaps in Digital Inclusion: Government and Cross-Nation Strategies", covered accessibility, AI infrastructure, skills development and the difficulty of writing policy that survives a border crossing. It was moderated by Solange El Rassi, with Samar Al-Shorfa, founding chief executive of She is Arab; Priscila Bossi, vice president of technology for SSEA, CIS and MEA at Philip Morris International; Wojciech Bajda, vice president and head of MENAR at Iron Mountain; and Lana Khalaf, public sector lead for MEA at Microsoft. Al-Shorfa pointed to national digital transformation programmes including Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030, and to the role of unified digital identity systems in widening access to services. She also called for greater diversity in business and entrepreneurship, and for AI to be deployed responsibly. The identity point deserves unpacking because it is where inclusion policy tends to succeed or fail quietly. A government can achieve near-universal mobile coverage and still leave large groups unable to open a bank account, register a business, receive a benefit payment or access a health record, because none of those transactions will complete without a verified identity the system trusts. Where a single national identity layer exists, every service built on top of it inherits that reach at once. Where it does not, each service builds its own verification, and the people who fall out of one process tend to fall out of all of them. Saudi Arabia's own government services have been assembled on that model, which is why the Kingdom is a useful reference point in a discussion that otherwise floats above implementation. The cross-border half of the session is the harder problem and the one least likely to be solved by anything announced at a technology show. Digital identity schemes are national by design, built on national registries and national law. Making them interoperable requires governments to accept each other's verification standards, which is a legal and political negotiation rather than a technical one. Panels can name the obstacle; they cannot clear it. Sessions of this kind are easy to dismiss next to the week's investment announcements, and the dismissal is usually earned. This one is worth recording because of the composition of the room: a regional women's network, an enterprise data-management company, a public-sector cloud lead and a technology executive from a consumer goods multinational, discussing skills and access rather than compute. That is a different set of participants from the ones filling the infrastructure stages, and a different definition of what the Kingdom's technology programme is for. It sits alongside the harder numbers circulating this week. Organisers put women at 36 percent of the Saudi technology workforce , and the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development used the show to launch an AI Arabia Center of Excellence for people already in the labour market . Measured service adoption has been rising too, with the Kingdom's digital experience maturity reported at 87 percent . No commitments, funding or follow-up programme were announced during the session. It was a discussion, and this report treats it as one. TechScoop is reporting from LEAP 2026 in Riyadh.