This paper sets out the ways in which technologies for learning have been at the heart of education for development for millennia, not as is sometimes thought only in the last 30 years of the digital revolution. Short case studies of the University of London External System and the Open University UK set out the development outcomes of these major distance education innovations. The context of widening access to Higher Education is acknowledged, in particular from the perspectives of student success and dropout. The major dimensions of open education enabled by digital affordances are elaborated, and their contribution to development acknowledged. Finally, the article suggests that the move to mass Higher Education systems in an overall majority of countries over the period of the UN Sustainable Development Goals will see the distinctions between online and campus-based modes diminished.