ISLAMABAD: President Dr Arif Alvi on Sunday urged youths to gain maximum benefits of IT-related world market that may help in overall development and prosperity of Pakistan.

“There are billions of opportunities for developing the smart apps. Pakistan is at the jumping board. Pakistan is now changing. The world is the market for IT [information technology] gadgets,” he said while addressing an international webinar titled ‘current entrepreneurship aspects in digital world’ arranged by the Joint Cultural Society for Communities Collaboration.

The president said: “Youths can avail the existing and innovative opportunities in the realm of information and technology and access the ever-expanding global IT market, possessing huge prospects for progress and prosperity.”

He said that huge, exponential and quantum changes were taking place in the information and technological field throughout the globe which heralded bright prospects for the youths of Pakistan to excel.

Through the Digi skills initiative, 1.6m people moved to next stage

The webinar was arranged to discuss the visions and trends in the digital world and the role of youths considering the latest changes in the artificial intelligence. People from different parts of the world attended the webinar.

Dr Alvi said mega revolutions were taking place in four key areas: first in computing, processing of data and analysis of the artificial intelligence; second, in the energy sector and these were linked

with biology; and finally in the 3D manufacturing, including virtual reality, blockchain, internet data, mobile computing, internet and social networking.

He said the government had developed the human resources for the technological world craving for trained youths.

“Through the Digi skills initiative, about 1.6 million people have moved to the next stage out of a total 2.4m who had applied for it,” he added.

Besides, the president said, the Higher Education Commission was also offering free courses.

He urged the people to learn developing software and smart apps as the global virtual capital or the brick-and-mortar businesses were also in search of investing in startups and smart apps developers.

Referring to the technological gap being created due to immense wonders taking place in the IT field, he said information was the medium in which people of the world were making strides.

“Young population of Pakistan could access the global information world after developing skills in the relevant field,” he added.

Dr Alvi said that for women empowerment, the Technical Education and Vocational Training Authority, Punjab, in collaboration with Facebook/Meta had trained 3,000 women to access the world and were planning to train another 100,000 females.

He expressed the confidence that the youths would prepare themselves for the rapid IT changes taking place around the world and would bring laurels to the country, besides getting earning opportunities.

Later, President Alvi telephoned and condoled with the brother of Naveed Iqbal, Assistant Sub-Inspector of Islamabad Police who, along with his family, had been stranded in snow in Murree and died on Saturday.

He expressed grief and sorrow over the death of the eight members of the family and prayed to Allah to rest the departed souls in eternal peace and grant courage to the bereaved family to bear this loss with fortitude.

Published in Dawn, January 10th, 2022