Junayed habib
University of Middlesex
Bangladesh’s technology sector carries genuinely impressive credentials. With over 4,500 software and ICT companies, a $5 billion IT and IT-enabled services industry, more than 650,000 skilled professionals, and software development rates 40 to 60 percent lower than India, the country has established a credible foundation for technology industry growth.
The more consequential question, and the one the country has yet to honestly confront, is whether Bangladesh can evolve from an offshore service delivery economy into a genuine software research hub, and whether it can build that research capacity where it is most economically necessary: outside Dhaka.
The Ghost Town Problem: A Warning from the Past
Bangladesh’s record on developing technology infrastructure outside its capital is, at present, a cautionary study in the gap between political ambition and ecosystem reality. The Bangabandhu Hi-Tech City in Kaliakoir (built with $120 million in World Bank financing and touted as Bangladesh’s “cyber capital”) was designed to house 100,000 workers by 2025. It currently receives approximately 5,000, mostly performing low-level assembly and data entry. The Sheikh Hasina Software Technology Park in Jashore, designated the “Silicon Valley of Bangladesh” at its 2017 inauguration, employs just 1,600 of its intended 20,000 workers. Engineers from Dhaka-based companies refused to relocate. The few who made the move did not stay.
The lesson is unambiguous and critical: software research ecosystems cannot be created by constructing buildings. They require a complete surrounding infrastructure, that must include quality housing, reliable connectivity, hospitals, schools, social environments, and that makes talent willing to live, not merely commute. Without that, even world-class physical facilities decay into expensive monuments to misplaced planning.
The Case for Decentralisation: If done properly
And yet the case for building software research capacity outside Dhaka is not weakened by these failures. It is rather strengthened by them, because it clarifies precisely what previous attempts got wrong.
Bangladesh possesses a structural asset that most technology-aspirant nations do not: a distributed network of engineering universities in regional cities. KUET in Khulna, CUET in Chittagong, RUET in Rajshahi, and SUST in Sylhet produce thousands of software and engineering graduates annually who currently have no meaningful employment opportunity in their own cities and are compelled to migrate to an already-saturated Dhaka labour market. These universities are not merely talent sources … they are potential anchor institutions around which genuine research clusters could be built, precisely as MIT anchored Cambridge, Massachusetts, and IIT anchored Bangalore’s transformation.
Chattogram, Sylhet, and Rajshahi each possess distinct competitive advantages for technology industry development. Chattogram’s port connectivity and industrial base make it a natural candidate for hardware-integrated software research linked to manufacturing. Sylhet’s substantial diaspora connection to the United Kingdom creates a ready pipeline of international investment, mentorship networks, and market access that few other Bangladeshi cities can replicate. Rajshahi’s lower cost of living relative to Dhaka means that a researcher earning a modest salary can sustain a quality of life in Rajshahi that would be impossible in the capital on twice the income.
The Economic Dividend of Getting This Right
The economic case for decentralised software research development is compelling and multidimensional. Regional tech clusters would retain graduate talent in their home cities, arresting the human capital drain that has left regional universities as training institutions for Dhaka’s benefit. They would generate high-value employment in cities where alternative formal sector employment is scarce, reducing rural-urban migration pressures that cost the national economy through congestion, infrastructure strain, and productivity loss. They would reduce commercial real estate and salary costs for software firms, improving their competitiveness in global markets. And they would diversify Bangladesh’s economic geography away from a dangerous concentration in a single city that sits below sea level in one of the world’s most climate-vulnerable delta systems.
Bangladesh can be a tech hub for software research. But it cannot build that future by repeating the mistake of erecting infrastructure in ecosystemic vacuums. Regional tech development requires a sequenced investment in livability first, connectivity second, and research infrastructure third, with engineering universities as the institutional anchors around which everything else is built. The potential is real. The blueprint from past failures is clear. What remains is the political will to execute differently.
