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Reporting live from the future, Circa 2021, 2031 and 2041
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9 percent) for Bangladesh to achieve its 2031 and 2041 targets.
Reports from the International Telecommunications Union, for example, have suggested that for a middle-income country like Bangladesh, an increase of 10 percent in mobile broadband penetration yields an increase of 1.8 percent in GDP for the country while an increase of 10 percent in digital ecosystem development index yields an increase of 1 percent growth in GDP per capita. Through its concerted efforts and strategic investments, BanglaDISH has played an instrumental role in boosting the country’s mobile broadband connectivity and its digital ecosystem development index to meet the GDP growth rate target of 9 percent from 2021 onward to meet its 2031 and 2041 targets.
Furthermore, according to reports from the global management consulting firm McKinsey & Company, AI has the potential to deliver additional global economic activity of around USD 13 trillion by 2030, or about 16 percent higher cumulative GDP compared with the status quo. This amounts to 1.2 percent additional GDP growth per year. BanglaDISH has been committed to delivering as much of the additional “kicker” as possible to the country’s GDP through further penetration of AI and the associated digital infrastructure.
BanglaDISH has also been pushing for a leapfrogging strategy by investing heavily in developing the requisite AI-savvy human capital. It turns out that the concept of leapfrogging originated in the context of economic growth theories that promulgated sustainable development for developing countries by way of accelerating their economic development by skipping inferior, less efficient, more expensive, more polluting technologies and industries and moving directly to more advanced ones.
A case in point is digital communication in developing countries like Bangladesh by moving directly from having few telephones to having widespread mobile phones, thus skipping the stage of copper-wire landline telephones altogether. Another example is the adoption of solar energy technologies to avoid repeating the mistakes of highly industrialised countries in creating an energy infrastructure based on non-renewable fossil fuels and “jump” directly into the Solar Age instead. In other words, the leapfrogging concept implies that Bangladesh could learn from the experiences of industrialised countries, such as Germany and the United States, and reimagine its own economic development path to bypass the potentially expensive and environmentally irreversible damages from an early stage.
The social dimension of the leapfrogging concept entails diffusion and adoption of modern technologies that would not only reduce costs and adverse environmental impacts, but also contribute to the realisation of the United Nations-initiated Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), such as no poverty, zero hunger, good health and wellbeing, and quality education, among others.
Since its launch in 2021, Newseum has been another bold initiative in Bangladesh for enabling the country’s key decision-makers to directly experience what’s possible in the future from where the future has already happened, namely the “front-runners” in the so-called Fourth Industrial Revolution or Industry 4.0. Billed as the “museum of news you can use” to accelerate the pace of meeting the country-specific SDGs ahead of the 2030 deadline while managing the transition to Industry 4.0 with minimal disruption, the Newseum has also become a virtual laboratory for AI-powered innovation and cross-industry collaboration in Bangladesh and beyond.
For example, Newseum has invested heavily in learning from direct “go & see” visits to the Industry 4.0 “lighthouses” curated by the World Economic Forum (WEF) that serve as beacons of digital transformation journeys for organisations worldwide. A Newseum-sponsored visit in 2021 to one of the sites in the WEF lighthouses network, namely the Bayer Pharmaceuticals Division in Garbagnate, Italy, inspired the leading pharmaceutical companies in Bangladesh to adapt their production practices to leapfrog to Industry 4.0 levels with unprecedented increases in efficiency with minimal displacement of workers. This catapulted the Bangladesh pharmaceutical industry to the top spot—ahead of the ready-made garments industry—by 2031 as the government and industry worked together to develop the requisite assets and capabilities to be among the global leaders in the production of advanced biopharmaceuticals.
By 2031, Newseum has evolved into an AI-powered virtual reality platform with the rank and status of a lighthouse based in Bangladesh showcasing the best practices and technologies representing the WEF-endorsed Industry 5.0 framework, which by now has also evolved to incorporate environmental sustainability, social responsibility and good governance practices. And not a moment too soon, 2041 is the year when Newseum gets recognised by the Prime Minister’s Office as a national treasure as the country celebrates its platinum jubilee. The spectacular celebrations have included a laser-light show (as an environmentally friendly alternative to the traditional air-polluting fireworks) along with highly orchestrated online virtual reality demonstrations of joy that made everyone in Bangladesh, which is duly recognised as a developed economy in terms of its GDP per capita, to be proud of the fact that the country has come a long way since its humble beginning in 1971.
Sam G Samdani, PhD, is a senior industry knowledge expert at McKinsey & Company, a global management consulting firm.
E-mail: gulam.samdani@gmail.com
The views expressed here are his own and do not necessarily represent that of McKinsey & Company.