Hasina invites global business to focus on Bangladesh

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has pitched for global knowledge and business to focus on Bangladesh to help her country make its 'Digital Bangladesh' dream come true.

She pointed out it would be a win-win' for both sides.

She made the call while joining a discussion, a part of the ongoing World Economic Forum meet, held at the Sheraton Hotel at Jakobshorn in Davos on Thursday evening.

The first elected prime minister of the country to be invited to the forum, Hasina did more than enough to seize the opportunity to explain in details before world leaders the ways in which Bangladesh is positioning itself to be a part of the emerging global knowledge economy.

Earlier, WEF founder and chief Karl Schwab explained the ways in which economic institutions the world over are transforming themselves to attune to a world changing fast through the use of technology and information-driven production methods.

Taking part in the discussion titled "Digital Leadership Policy Meeting on Davos" as a special guest panellist, Hasina began by taking a gaze down the future.

"As we move we must see that technology does not become a limiting factor for people's peace-stability-prosperity," she observed.

She underscored that while harnessing the prowess of information communication technology in Bangladesh, the guiding vision of her government is to ensure “every individual gets a footprint in the changed space – in terms of choices, access and opportunities".

Hasina recalled that returning to power in 2009, her government committed itself to the vision of a "Digital Bangladesh" despite stiff challenges and bottlenecks.  

"Facing an emerging new global landscape, as early as in 2009, Bangladesh brought in our political vision – Vision 2021 (of graduating Bangladesh as an Middle Income Country) and Vision 2041 (of shaping as a developed nation). In spite of so many developmental challenges, we rolled our mission of ‘Digital Bangladesh'", she said.

Her government wanted to expose the millions of youths of the country to the most advanced technologies of the world. "Our aim was to bridge the knowledge and technological gaps within our societies as also with outside world," she added.

Pointing out that the use of ICT in education has always been a thrust area of her government, she said through initiatives like MuktoPath -- Bangladesh's version of Coursera, and revamping the existing Technical and Vocational Education Training (TVET), the government intends to keep the youth of Bangladesh relevant to the changing world order.  

Trying to entice global technology giants to consider investment and operations in Bangladesh, she said, "Our people are receptive and highly adaptive to any technology, including ICTs".

The prime minister pointed out that Bangladesh has the 10th largest mobile-phone subscribers’ population.

"Over 60 million people are online, mostly with smartphones."

Hasina spoke at length about the government initiatives aimed at using ICTs in every walk of life. Her government intends to come up with a unique ‘Skills and Employment Dashboard’ to coordinate and oversee all inter-sector skill development initiatives.

Bangladesh, she said, has a vast pool of ICT freelancers and shared her government's intention to encourage more women in the arena.

With her government's vision set on a future where ‘Digital Bangladesh’ would touch more lives, she made an emotive call to business and knowledge leaders to direct their attention to Bangladesh.

She said with the government determined to carry the ICT wave further through several innovations, there was a world of possibility for both sides in a 'mutual win-win' situation.