While addressing a function at Software Technology Park on Thursday, the State Minister for Information and Communication Technology said that Startups will be the main driving force of the country’s future economy, and for that to happen an innovative ecosystem will be built with knowledge-based economy as the main focus. In addition, the new Vision 2021 Tower will be at the core of building this innovation ecosystem, associated with 10 universities.
We completely agree and take the minister’s statement to be a visionary one.
However, developed countries have made a shift from industrial to knowledge-based societies long ago. They view the economy as culture, not just as financial and material capital, giving due consideration to the other dimensions as well. This concept of the knowledge-based economy, opposed to the conventional material-based capital one, has been effectively implemented in those countries.
Most importantly, education systems for the knowledge-driven economy reach larger segments of the population. These systems produce a workforce equipped with higher-level of skills and creative quality, and foster lifelong learning for them.
But any long-term vision comes with a series of challenges. Our population has an average educational attainment. And the supply of highly trained knowledgeable workers required for the knowledge-based economy is very limited. Moreover, the higher education system in Bangladesh is traditional, and it is not future-oriented.
Present teaching pedagogy still encourages memorisation, and learning mode is mainly classroom teaching. Students are passive recipients of this methodology. Teaching is deeply teacher-centred. It should be student-centred. Not surprisingly, in this year’s Global Knowledge Index by UNDP, Bangladesh ranked 112th out of 138 countries, the lowest rank in South Asia.
We need to start with the tertiary education system, where Bangladesh now has over a hundred universities, counting both public as well as private universities. While this is indeed a significant achievement in terms of quantity, most are very poor in terms of quality.
These colossal challenges to transform the entire education sector with a focus to knowledge-based economy must be addressed the soonest.
In conclusion, every cloud has a silver lining.  Bangladesh has all the opportunities and potentials to become a significant knowledge-based economy by 2030 – but only if we make the right decisions and investments going forward.
Our most valuable national assets are our young girls and boys, and if we are able to invest in educating them better, we can indeed transform into a significant knowledge-based economy within a decade. However, it will require a national consensus for us to make the necessary paradigm shift needed.