Bangladesh’s dreams of becoming a prosperous, developed, poverty-free and equitable nation are captured by its bold ‘Vision 2041’ – an aspirational strategic plan to transform the economy to reach High-Income Country (HIC) status by 2041 and achieve the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals along the way. Vision 2041 builds on Bangladesh’s remarkable journey towards mass digitization over the past 13 years, guided by its Digital Bangladesh. At the heart of this development journey lies a simple yet powerful idea: that creating shared prosperity isn’t possible unless administrative, financial, and political power is decentralised at the grassroots level. That is, unless all citizens are truly empowered. The Aspire to Innovation (a2i), a special programme of the government’s Digital Bangladesh agenda supported by the UNDP, focuses on doing precisely this by improving quality, widening access and decentralising the delivery of public services. Anir Chowdhury, policy advisor of the a2i programme, joins us from Bangladesh to tell us more.
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