Reyad Hasnain: Everybody wants a technology-led development in Bangladesh. The ICT sector has already grown but it is not enough to go ahead with massive success.

Official figures from the Export Promotion Bureau show that ICT service exports reached approximately $725 million in fiscal year 2024-25. The seven percent year-on-year growth was respectable but placed Bangladesh well behind regional peers. Pakistan`s IT exports crossed US$3.8 billion with an eighteen percent annual increase. India`s IT sector, of course, operates on an entirely different scale, with exports approaching US$225 billion.

These comparisons matter not to induce despair but to clarify the challenge. Bangladesh has roughly 500,000 professionals working in the ICT sector, a large pool of freelancers — estimates suggest 650,000 or more — and annual export growth that has been steady if unspectacular. The ingredients exist. What seems to be missing is the institutional machinery that converts raw talent into formal earnings captured in the banking system.

Industry veterans point to several explanations. The freelance economy, which accounts for a significant share of actual digital work, often operates through informal channels that don`t register in official statistics. Small firms lack the certifications and market access needed to compete for larger international contracts. And the sector remains concentrated in a narrow band of services — data entry, basic customer support, simple web development — rather than the higher-value work in cloud architecture, artificial intelligence, or cybersecurity consulting where global demand is growing fastest.

Training programmes and the employment puzzle

Walk through any city in Bangladesh and you`ll find training centres offering courses in graphic design, web development, digital marketing, and freelancing. Government initiatives, NGO programmes, and private institutes have proliferated over the past decade, processing hundreds of thousands of young people through short-term courses.

The question that nobody seems able to answer with confidence is: what happened to these training holders?

Individual success stories abound. A young man from Bogura is earning in a month what his father makes in a year. A woman in Sylhet is supporting her family through online work. These narratives inspire and deserve celebration. But aggregated data on employment outcomes — the kind of systematic tracking that would reveal whether training programmes actually lead to jobs — remains remarkably scarce.

What we do know is troubling. Studies suggest that less than twenty percent of IT graduates from private universities are immediately employable without additional upskilling. A significant skills gap persists between what training programmes teach and what employers actually need. And there`s an uncomfortable truth that rarely makes it into policy documents: a substantial number of graduates end up in work entirely unrelated to their training.

This matters because the human cost of failed expectations is real. A young person who invests time and often money in digital skills training, only to find no work waiting at the end, doesn`t just experience personal disappointment. That experience breeds cynicism about the entire digital development project.

What would accountability look like here? First, the government proposing large-scale training programmes should commit to publishing employment data — job placement rates within six months of course completion, broken down by region, gender, and skill category. Second, the metric of success should shift from "number trained" to something like "training-to-earnings ratio": average income generated relative to training cost. Third, and perhaps most controversially, training programmes need to be coupled with real market access.

Startup Scene: Bright spots and structural weaknesses

Dhaka`s startup ecosystem has produced genuine success stories. Companies in fintech, e-commerce, and logistics have raised significant capital and built real businesses. The recent merger of ShopUp with Saudi Arabia`s Sary to form SILQ Group — valued at $110 million — marked the largest M&A transaction in Bangladeshi startup history and demonstrated that local ventures could achieve regional scale.

The geographic concentration is equally concerning. Startup activity remains overwhelmingly centred in Dhaka and, to a lesser extent, Chattogram. The vast majority of funded ventures emerge from the same handful of incubators and accelerator programmes. Outside the capital, the ecosystem barely exists.

Cybersecurity: The overlooked foundation

In discussions about digital transformation, cybersecurity tends to receive passing mention rather than serious attention. This is a dangerous oversight. As more government services, financial transactions, and personal data move online, the attack surface for malicious actors expands correspondingly. Bangladesh`s digital economy cannot mature without a robust security foundation.

The talent shortage is acute. Estimates suggest Bangladesh has fewer than five certified cybersecurity professionals per million population — a figure that pales against South Korea`s 500 per million. Training programmes exist but cannot keep pace with demand. Meanwhile, organisations across sectors face sophisticated threats from phishing attacks to ransomware to state-sponsored intrusions.

What metrics would demonstrate genuine progress? Time to detect breaches — globally, best-in-class organisations identify intrusions within hours; in Bangladesh`s public sector, detection often takes weeks. Certified professionals per capita, tracked against specific targets.

Rural Dimension: Who gets left behind?

The gap between urban and rural Bangladesh in digital access and opportunity is stark. While cities have benefited from improved connectivity and a growing tech ecosystem, many rural communities remain underserved. Mobile internet penetration has expanded dramatically, but the quality and affordability of connections vary enormously. The infrastructure exists on paper; the reality on the ground is often different.

More troubling than connectivity gaps is the skills divide. Studies indicate that the vast majority of youth in rural areas lack basic digital skills. Rural households have lower internet access, fewer devices, and limited exposure to the opportunities that digital literacy can unlock. The freelancers earning dollars from international clients are overwhelmingly located in urban centres. The training programmes that might change this equation rarely reach villages and smaller towns.

An inclusive ICT vision must address this disparity explicitly. This means not only expanding infrastructure but ensuring that rural populations have genuine pathways into the digital economy. Community training centres, district-level tech hubs, and targeted programmes for women and underrepresented groups — these are the building blocks of inclusive digital development.

Path forward

Bangladesh has real assets in the digital economy. A young, tech-savvy population, a growing base of skilled professionals and a freelance workforce has established genuine presence in global markets. Mobile financial services have achieved remarkable penetration. These foundations can support substantial growth if the right structures are built upon them.

But growth requires honesty about current weaknesses. These include the export gap, the employment puzzle, the startup capital crunch, the cybersecurity deficit, the rural divide and so many. These are not problems that disappear with confident announcements or ambitious targets. They require patient institutional work, sustained investment, and above all, a willingness to measure outcomes and adjust when things aren`t working.

The result has been a gap between rhetoric and reality that breeds cynicism among the very young people the digital economy is supposed to serve.

Writer: Reyad Hasnain is a policy analyst specializing in digital governance and public-sector reform.