4th Industrial Revolution to create 10m jobs in 10 years: Study

According to a study conducted by the Aspire to Innovate (a2i) programme, 5.5 million people will lose their jobs in the next 10 years in Bangladesh due to the 4th Industrial Revolution (4IR), but at the same time the country will be able to create about 10 million jobs if it moves forward in a planned way.

"During the 4IR, technologies will dominate various sectors in our country while people will control the technologised system," said Sami Ahmed, policy adviser at Leveraging ICT Project, referring to the 2020 study by the a2i.

Some of the sectors where most of the jobs will be created are Industrial Robotics control, automated packaging, Computer Aided Design (CAD) and Computer Aided Manufacturing (CAM), 3D printing, internet of things, cyber security, and big data analytics, said Sami Ahmed, who presented two papers at the webinar on "4IR Opportunities and Challenges," organised by the Bangladesh e-Government Computer Incident Response Team on Tuesday.

He said over 37 Bangladeshi startups raised more than $320 million as international investment in the first nine months of 2021.

He further said 3,524 people have received training in 24 state-of-the-art technologies under the Fast Track Future Leader (FTFL) programme of the Leveraging ICT project. Among them, 2,909 are working in 103 organisations. Some of the notable technology tracks of the FTFL programme are artificial intelligence, machine learning, blockchain, robotics, virtual reality, and augmented reality.

Illustrating the future of the 4IR, Sami Ahmed said it will reduce risk at the workplace due to automation, increase demand for specialised jobs, improve regulation in the manufacturing industry, revolutionise the healthcare sector, and improve living standards. 

However, the 4IR will also pose some challenges like ensuring data security, ensuring uninterrupted internet connection, affected production due to technological errors, security of privacy, and loss of jobs due to automation, said Sami Ahmed. 

"We are going to set up an organisation called "Centre for 4IR" in the upcoming year. We will provide online training as well as physical training for different sectors. We will also arrange training under the ICT Division for important sectors including banking and RMG," he said.

"We are trying to include coding lessons in the curriculum for students in grade three and four. In addition, changes will be made in school and college level ICT curriculum," he added.

BGD E-Gov Project Director Tarique M Barkatullah hosted the webinar.