Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina calls on youth to be ready for industrial revolution

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has called on the youth to be ‘ready for tomorrow’ echoing the theme of Digital World-2017 exhibition.

Hasina inaugurated the expo, the largest in Bangladesh’s ICT sector, at Bangabandhu International Conference Centre in Dhaka on Wednesday.

The premier met the world’s first robot citizen Sophia there. Sophia has flown to Bangladesh from Hong Kong to attend the exhibition in the capital.

“We want to prepare Bangladesh for tomorrow. The cycle of development is already rolling. No-one can stop it.”

“We have kept our promise. Today’s Bangladesh is a digital one. No-one can deny that,” Hasina said.

The Awami League had promised to create a ‘Digital Bangladesh’ in its manifesto released before the ninth general election in 2008.

Hasina cited the rise in numbers of internet users over a period of nine years until 2017. A total of 80 million people have access to the internet now compared to 0.8 million in 2009, she said.

ICT Division in collaboration with Bangladesh Association of Software and Information Services or BASIS organised has organised the three-day expo.

The organisers aim to highlight the achievements of Bangladesh and explore new avenues in the sector of information and communication technology.

Hasina noted how prices of bandwidth have been reduced to connect people from the grass-root level. She pointed out how all government services are now available on mobile handsets.

“We can see an industrial revolution lying ahead as a result of the expansion of information and communication technology,” Hasina said. “And 65 percent of our population are aged below 35. So we must use such demographic dividend effectively.”

“The ICT Division is training around 50,000 young boys and girls. The universities are teaching robotics, internet of things, data analytics lab,” she went on.

Every year Bangladesh gets 10,000 ICT graduates and Bangladeshi youth have been assigned to turn 10,000 apartments in Japan into smart homes.

Bangladesh currently exports software and IT services to more than 50 countries, including USA, Canada and Australia, and is expanding markets to Africa, she said.

Software exports may rise to more than $5 billion by 2021 from $1 billion now, she hoped.

The government was also working towards creating jobs and entrepreneurship opportunities for the youth in the ICT sector, she added.

State Minister for Information and Communication Technology Zunaid Ahmed Palak and BASIS President Mustafa Jabbar also spoke at the event.