State Minister for ICT Zunaid Ahmed Palak on Wednesday said Bangladesh must include ICT in all sectors and all developmental activities to achieve sustainable development goals (SDGs).
He said Bangladesh is the seventh largest market in the world and is also enjoying demographic dividend.
“With this, we’ll make Bangladesh the next global IT destination,” the State Minister said while addressing a signing ceremony in the city. The new partnership was announced between the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Division and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Bangladesh.
A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed between the two organisations at the Software Technology Park, Janata Tower in the city.
The State Minister and Country Director of UNDP in Bangladesh Sudipto Mukerjee are optimistic that the partnership will help Bangladesh make the transition to a more inter-connected, and knowledge-driven society.
“We talk frequently about the need to embrace and promote technological solutions to development challenges, and the agreement signed today marks a concrete step in this direction. We’ve moved from speaking to doing, and plan on doing much more,” said Sudipto Mukerjee.
The partnership seeks to place ICT at the heart of the country’s national development efforts, fostering innovation to accelerate progress towards the SDGs. The ICT Division and UNDP are already planning on cooperating on a series of projects designed to promote Bangladesh’s tolerant and inclusive spirit, using online platforms and partnering with the global Facebook giant. The MoU is a flexible and dynamic arrangement, allowing the ICT Division and UNDP to collaborate in designing and developing new projects and initiatives.
The partnership will connect Bangladesh to global innovation hubs that can bring new ideas and expertise to the country. UNDP hoped that closer cooperation with the government in the area of ICT can promote a more inclusive digital engagement of the people of Bangladesh, and lead to a more effective ‘all-of-society approach’ to common development goals.
