US Knowledge Corridor could be a boon for Pakistan Talent & Economy

February 2016 saw four Pakistanis distinguish themselves with extraordinary achievements in the fields of science, technology and arts.

Professor Nergis Mavalvala, a prominent Pakistani-American MIT scientist and Imran Khan, a PhD candidate working at Italy’s Gran Sasso Science Institute, hit headlines in Pakistan for being part of the team that discovered gravitational waves in the fabric of space of time in a momentous development toward unravelling some of cosmic mysteries. During the same week, the University of Texas at Arlington announced that a Pakistani engineer and professor, Samir Iqbal, had invented a device that would detect cancer in its early stages, and help treat the disease before it metastasizes into a deadly form. On February 28, filmmaker Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, a Pakistani-Canadian, bagged her second Oscar for a documentary that highlights the need to save women from honour killing.

The Pakistanis in this bunch of exceptional talent have two factors in common. All of them were born in Pakistan. But they were able to work wonders with their studies and work abroad, with a majority of them in the United States. That clearly shows that if given opportunity, Pakistanis can scale new heights in innovation and invention at home as well.

Therefore, it made perfect sense that the United States and Pakistan, two close allies fighting violent extremism, pledged in the same month to expand bilateral cooperation in the areas of education, science, and technology under the US-Pakistan Knowledge Corridor. The initiative will enable thousands of Pakistanis to get higher education at state-of-the-art institutions.

The US-Pakistan Knowledge Corridor – which envisages to expand Pakistan’s intellectual capital through higher education and research — coincides with China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, which promises to step up the country’s development with a massive $46 billion investment in infrastructure and energy fields.

The two complementary corridors symbolize the 190-million Pakistani nation’s aspiration to come out of the shadow of its costly fight against terror and the Afghan war, and fuel the economic growth in a higher gear, fashioning a long-awaited socio-economic uplift.

How US will help Pakistan

The two countries discussed cooperation under US-Pakistan Education, Science and Technology Working Group that is part of the Strategic Dialogue that met here in Washington this week. Secretary of State John Kerry and Pakistan’s top Foreign Affairs Advisor Sartaj Aziz led the Strategic Dialogue.

Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Richard Stengel and Pakistani Minister of Planning, Development, and Reform Ahsan Iqbal chaired the second US-Pakistan Education, Science, and Technology Working Group meeting.

According to the State Department the US-Pakistan Education, Science, and Technology Working Group provides a platform to strengthen cooperation under the “US-Pakistan Knowledge Corridor,” focused on advancing academic networks, partnerships, and exchanges in higher education, science, and technology.

At the meeting, Under Secretary Stengel and Minister Iqbal signed a statement recognizing the commitment by Pakistan’s Higher Education Commission to fund scholarships for an additional 125 Pakistani PhD students in the United States through the Fulbright Program over the next five years, complementing the US investment in the Fulbright Program in Pakistan, which is the largest worldwide.

“Both sides discussed how our countries’ cooperation in education, science, and technology through the “US-Pakistan Knowledge Corridor” provides a lasting foundation for US-Pakistan ties and serves as an engine for long-term economic growth.”

MIT Prof. Nergis Mavlvala Courtesy of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation [CC BY 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Significantly, the two countries have made substantial achievements since the last Working Group held in Islamabad in June 2015: doubling joint funding for collaborative science and technology research grants; launching US-Pakistan Centres for Advanced Studies in energy, water, and agriculture/food security, part of the 23 total US-Pakistan university partnerships; and the announcement of the joint Let Girls Learn initiative to expand educational opportunity for adolescent girls, according to the statement.

At the Working Group, the US announced establishment of a new university partnership between the University of Massachusetts and a consortium of universities in Balochistan.

Ahsan Iqbal spoke about Islamabad’s desire for 10,000 Pakistanis to obtain PhDs at US universities by 2025; the two sides agreed to explore initiatives to expand educational opportunities for Pakistani students in the United States at the tertiary level.

They also recognised that ongoing investments in basic and higher education, including through the Let Girls Learn Initiative, will create a well-educated workforce that will drive innovation, gender equality, and a knowledge-based economy, the State Department said.

The fruition of the promised leap in higher education would augur well for Pakistan in many ways. Socially and politically it will help flourish a climate of democracy, overcome restrictions on freethinking and creativity that suffered on account of long dictatorial rules and conservatism. The progress will open up new vistas of progress for precocious Pakistanis. The economic advancement will also help Pakistani society dilute the debilitating appeal of militancy in insurgency-hit areas as the young people will have employment opportunity from economic progress and hope for a better future will make them far less vulnerable to radicalization.

What Pakistan needs to do

But in order for Pakistan to make up for the lost decades, Islamabad needs to take some absolutely essential steps that overcome nagging roadblocks and create a favorable environment that reverses the brain drain.

Ahsan Iqbal’s vision 2025 is appreciable but it needs to be backed up by a series of factors. All higher education institutions must conform to higher international standards, and they must have highly qualified professionals at the helm, those who do not compromise on merit.

Secondly, the universities and technological institutions should correspond their education and skills training to the local development potential in order to magnify the output and diversify industrial and agrarian exports.

Thirdly, Pakistani researchers and scientists should be encouraged with incentives to come up with plans that maximize the volume of exports, particularly by targeting knowledge-driven work in sciences and information technologies. A knowledge economy would bolster the overall exports which despite some remarkable achievements in traditional fields – in 2014 Pakistan beat out international rivals to manufacture and export millions of Brazuca soccer balls – and spur annual exports from the current level stagnating at under-$30 billion level.

Fourthly, as the Zarb-e-Azb campaign and other counterterrorism operations help improve the security outlook for the country, Islamabad should continuously showcase potential business areas to foreign investors. A fast-paced generation of jobs through investment would help improve law and order and raise development stakes among all communities, especially in areas like Balochistan and interior Sindh.

Most important of all, the Nawaz Sharif government must expand the federal education budget from the abysmal two per cent of GDP to four per cent to ensure a steady stream of researchers, professionals, entrepreneurs, innovators, trouble-shooters and creative leaders that make high growth sustainable in the years ahead. The government has vowed to boost annual education spending to four per cent of GDP by 2018. Why not now? Pakistan’s macroeconomic stability – achieved under the current government with record foreign exchange reserves — must translate into significant increase in development spending, and there is no better place to start than human resource development through education.

That it is human capital that sustains a country’s development is evident from both success stories and failures of nations. Besides unprecedented advancement of the United States, recent Chinese and Indian economic strides owe a lot to their highly skilled human resource. Pakistan’s own story of the Brazuca ball, manufactured in Sialkot, and internationally accepted as one of the best soccer balls made ever – proves that there is no alternative to human skill.

On the other hand, many oil-rich countries in the Middle East are struggling in the face of oil glut that is likely to keep fuel prices down for long. Their dependence on the raw material and failure to diversify economies has suddenly made oil producers vulnerable to world market shocks. The knowledge and economic corridors by the two influential friends of Pakistan – US and Pakistan — offer the country an un-missable opportunity to make amends for the lost decades and steer the country forward by developing and honing the skills and talent of its people – the real wealth of the nation.

Featured Image on the top shows campus of National University of Sciences and Technology in Islamabad. Photo Credit : Knowfahad via Wikimedia Commons