Challenges Pakistan faces in a digital age

One of the most headline grabbing features of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent visit to the US was his tour of the Silicon Valley.
He showed a lot of intent and purpose in his meetings with top executives of companies like Google, Microsoft and Facebook. In his interactions with these leading innovators, Modi was able to sell India as a lucrative market ready to embrace the future in a more inclusive manner.
He cleverly used the US visit as an opportunity to gain commitments from world business leaders for his vision of ‘Digital India’ to transform the country into a digitally empowered knowledge economy.
The ‘Digital India’ initiative aims to propel the country into a more prosperous future by creating more participative, transparent and responsive government. Under the plan, all government services will be accessible to the masses electronically and technological modernization is being seen as a panacea for India’s deep-rooted social and economic problems. Although India is expected to face several challenges in making this dream a reality, it is at least moving in the right direction.
India’s clear government policy to promote technology and innovation has got people in across the border thinking: What are the authorities doing to help Pakistan gear up for this challenge?
While India has positioned itself as one of the leading players in the global IT sector, Pakistan has also made immense progress in this field since the 2000’s. Focusing mainly on offshoring, the country has developed a nascent call center industry by overcoming low market entry barriers and employing a large English-speaking, young population.
Boasting a general mobile penetration of 80 percent (close to 150 million mobile subscribers), with smartphone adoption between 7 to 10 percent, the mobile landscape presents Pakistan the next biggest opportunity. The introduction of 3G and 4G services means that ecommerce and social media is set to witness unprecedented growth levels to the advantage of budding techpreneurs.
However, Pakistan needs to create an ecosystem that attracts high quality talent to the digital sector and provides healthy returns in technology.
The government may do well by learning a few lessons from the Indian success story — invest more in engineering universities, setup more vocational training and English language institutes, encourage uptake in venture capital funding and enter into partnerships with tech startups.
To achieve a trajectory like India and other emerging Southeast Asian countries in the IT sector, Pakistan needs more than a few isolated and sporadic private sector efforts.
The government must play a central role in boosting confidence in IT investments. Local success stories will promote competition, technology and infrastructure development in the IT industry to eventually realize the true potential of its size and growth.
On the governance side, Pakistan has a long way to cover in promoting a more transparent and participative form of government that creates a lasting impact on the lives of ordinary citizens. The country must first make necessary structural adjustments in the electoral process, strengthen judiciary and other national institutions, before embarking on the journey to digitize all government services.
The world around us is changing fast and proactive adoption of technology is critical for progress in the digital age. While Pakistan has all the right ingredients to keep up with the challenge of ‘Digital India,’ there is need for a greater government resolve and concerted efforts in this direction.