Oxford University professor of globalisation and development and founding director of the Oxford Martin School Ian Goldin will open the event on August 2.
Goldin was announced this time last year as the 2020 keynote, but was later replaced by Western Australian premier Mark McGowan due to COVID-19 travel restrictions
Diggers chairman Jim Walker told MNN the plan was to have Goldin speak in person, but he would deliver his keynote presentation virtually if need-be.
Walker said organisers considered having Goldin deliver his keynote virtually last year, but they'd had no experience in live streaming at that point.
Due to border closures, the 2020 event was streamed to more than 2300 people across the globe.
"After the experience we had last year, we're a lot more comfortable with it," Walker said.
Goldin, who lectures at Oxford, Harvard University and Tsinghua University, has provided keynotes at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos for the past 21 years.
In 2014, Goldin famously predicted that a pandemic would be the most likely cause of the next financial crisis.
Goldin's Monday morning keynote at Diggers will be followed by more than 50 company presentations over three days.
The presenter program will be released in May.
The event, which will celebrate its 30th edition this year, will return to its normal dates of the first week of August after being pushed back to October last year due to the pandemic.
