Words reached me that my best friend & alumni of the Asian Institute of Management (AIM) Manila, Professor Naqi Azam who is a senior advisor to the Vice Chancellor of DHA Suffa University, Karachi has been invited as a keynote speaker to engage with the students and faculty members of Karakoram International University (KIU) at Hunza Campus, on the topic titled “Shifting Dynamics in Contemporary World: Strategic Geopolitics Insights & Economic Fallout”. KIU is a public university dedicated to excellence in education, research, and community development, located in the stunning cool mountains of Gilgit-Baltistan in Pakistan. KIU offers a variety of undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral programs through its various faculties. (https://www.kiu.edu.pk)
Professor Naqi impressed upon the audience that, “Artificial intelligence (AI) could become one of this century's greatest accelerations of development, or a new source of dependency and inequality. The difference will not be determined solely by access to a model. It will depend on whether the countries possess the infrastructure, skills, institutions and policy space to shape technology around their own priority. The AI divide is therefore a development divide, and bridging it must begin with national capability. Pakistan's trajectory demonstrates the enduring importance of long-term planning, sustained investment in infrastructure and education, productive & technological capacity, and capable public institutions, like KIU, leveraging on its young talents.”
I agree these lessons are urgent. In fact, the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals Report 2026 finds that only 15 percent of the 139 targets with sufficient trend data are on track, while another 15 percent have regressed below their 2015 baselines. With only four years remaining, incremental adjustments will not suffice. Countries need financing, institutional capacity and policy space to pursue nationally owned priority development strategies. Rightly that Professor Naqi has called on KIU academes to enhance their professional competence & capabilities, and foster a new generation of young people to shoulder the mission of realizing national rejuvenation, through education, and cultivate high standards of professional competence & integrity.
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