Minister for Planning, Development and Special Initiatives Professor Ahsan Iqbal, on Thursday made a clarion call for a national reawakening rooted in knowledge, innovation and technological prowess.
Addressing a policy dialogue titled “Science, Technology, and Engineering for Development (STED)-2025: Innovate, Integrate and Implement”; here at the Pakistan Academy of Sciences (PAS), he said Pakistan stood at a critical crossroads and asserted that the nation’s future hinged not on the abundance of natural resources but on its capacity to generate, harness and apply knowledge.
“We are not here to tinker with the status quo. We are here to transform Pakistan into a techno-economy,”; he added.
In a speech that wove together history, theology and geopolitical foresight, Ahsan Iqbal invoked the Islamic tradition of scholarship.
Citing Quranic encouragement to explore the universe, he reminded the audience that Islamic Spain, centuries ago, was home to 70 public libraries that introduced Europe to scientific knowledge through Arabic translations.
According to UNESCO Institute for Statistics, the average R&D spending in Muslim-majority countries was only 0.3% of GDP compared to 2.5 to 4% in developed countries, he said regretting ”; We went from being leaders of knowledge to consumers of technology, and this is a wake-up call.
“There was a time when the Muslim world led the world in thought,”; he said, reminding today the Muslim world represented 25 percent of the global population but contributed less than 2 percent to scientific advancement.
He urged a national pivot toward realigning Pakistan’s science, technology and engineering (STE) infrastructure with its development ambitions.
“;Pakistan now must reclaim its intellectual heritage not by looking backwards with nostalgia, but by moving forward with urgency, vision, investment and action. In today’s global race, nations are not competing over oil and gas, they are competing over talent, ideas, innovation and technology.”;
He pointed to global models including South Korea and Singapore that rose to economic prominence through strategic investments in research, innovation and human capital.
“Today’s global competition is not about oil and gas. It’s about skills, technology, and the ability to innovate,”; he stressed.
Highlighting the centrality of science and engineering in Pakistan’s path forward, the minister mentioned the PML-N government’s initiative to establish of Daanish University, which he described as a “game changer”; in the country’s pursuit of technological excellence.
The minister also reiterated the government’s commitment to shifting from traditional export models toward knowledge-based industries.
For the purpose, Ahsan Iqbal said the government has placed science and technology at the centre of its development strategy, the Five E’s framework that focused on exports, e-Pakistan, equity and empowerment, environment, and energy and infrastructure.
“An export-led economy is the heartbeat of the ‘URAAN PAKISTAN’ initiative,”; he said, advocating for a move beyond textiles to sectors like agri-tech, health tech, and edu-tech, which he called “the real engines of growth in the 21st century.”;
As a testament to this shift, Ahsan Iqbal said just a day earlier, a batch of 1,000 agricultural scientists had left for China for advanced training.
Calling them “game changers”; in facing the challenges of a third Green Revolution, he noted with pride that 50 per cent of the cohort of 300 scientists comprised women.
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