Digital transformation key to Pakistan’s economic future: Sh

Key Takeaways

• ISLAMABAD, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 7th Sep, 2026) Federal Minister for Information Technology and Telecommunication Shaza Fatima Khaw
• Addressing the LEAP 2026 conference on “How We Built a Digital Nation”, she said Pakistan was building its national digital stack on open-source techn
• She said Pakistan would share the digital stack free of cost with frontier and emerging nations once it was completed
• Digital technology should help countries move beyond modernisation towards wealth creation and greater economic independence, she added
• Ms Shaza said Pakistan had moved away from pursuing “fancy big projects” and was focusing instead on building strong digital foundations

ISLAMABAD, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 7th Sep, 2026) Federal Minister for Information Technology and Telecommunication Shaza Fatima Khawaja has said Pakistan believes the 21st century belongs to emerging nations that can use digital technology to create wealth and shape their own future.

Addressing the LEAP 2026 conference on “How We Built a Digital Nation”, she said Pakistan was building its national digital stack on open-source technology.

She said Pakistan would share the digital stack free of cost with frontier and emerging nations once it was completed. Digital technology should help countries move beyond modernisation towards wealth creation and greater economic independence, she added.

Ms Shaza said Pakistan had moved away from pursuing “fancy big projects” and was focusing instead on building strong digital foundations.

Over the past two years, she said, the government had introduced key legislation, including the Digital Nation Pakistan Act and the National AI Policy.

The measures aimed to support the technology ecosystem while ensuring ethical, security and sovereignty safeguards, she added.

She said right-of-way reforms had also been introduced to promote fibre connectivity and broadband adoption.

“In a nutshell, what we did was the grunt work for very strong, solid foundations for a digital era,” she said.

The minister said the government began its efforts by listening to the concerns of investors, industry, young people and international partners.

She identified digital connectivity as the first major challenge, saying digital development was impossible without reliable, high-speed internet across the country.

Spectrum availability had been a major bottleneck, she said, adding that Pakistan had conducted the world’s largest spectrum auction, offering 480 megahertz.

The rollout was now well underway, she said. Pakistan had also landed two new submarine cables, while fibre reforms had been introduced and house passes had increased by almost 100 per cent.

Shaza identified policy continuity as the second major challenge. She credited Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif with establishing the Special Investment Facilitation Council (SIFC), which she said had helped ensure policy continuity.

The council is headed by the prime minister and supported by Chief of Defence Forces Field Marshal Syed Asim Munir. It also includes the chief executives of the four provinces and cabinet members.

Business competitiveness was the third major challenge, particularly for technology companies facing taxation-related difficulties, she said.

“We’ve developed special technology zones for our companies that have tax-free status for the next 10 years,” she said.

Pakistan was also working to introduce international payment gateways for its youth and expand sovereign computing, she added.

“These are two areas where we feel that any investor who comes in ... has a huge opportunity to capture in a country like Pakistan,” she said.

The minister said digital transformation had become a priority across the government.

“All our ministries now understand that tech is no longer a vertical, but an enabling sector that has to be woven into every single strategy,” she said.

Explaining the need for rapid digital transformation, Shaza said economies generally grew through an S-curve, moving from gradual development to rapid expansion before reaching a plateau.

Countries at that stage, she said, needed innovation, partnerships and smart investment to sustain growth. “If you want to compress decades into years and cross this S-curve fast to become a developed nation with a diversified economy, you must become a digital nation,” she said.

She described digital transformation as the “single greatest intervention” a government could make to secure its future and accelerate development.

Shaza said Pakistan had laid the foundations of a digital nation and was now rapidly building its digital stack. She described Pakistan as one of the world’s largest investment opportunities and said stable leadership, digital public infrastructure and ecosystem investment could make double-digit digital growth possible.

Pakistan, she added, had a population of 240 million, with more than 150 million people under 30.

“We cannot afford to learn slowly,” she said.

Sharing lessons from Pakistan’s digital transformation, the minister said governments should learn from countries that had already undergone the process. She outlined five lessons from Pakistan’s experience. The first, she said, was that governments should make laws and policies, not software. The government’s role was to create supportive laws, policies and institutions with clear mandates.

The second lesson was the need for a digital GovTech agency between the ministry responsible for policy and the public and private entities implementing projects.

Such an agency should develop a target operating model and enable a whole-of-government approach, she said.

Ideally, the agency should report directly to the head of state. In Pakistan, she said, the National Digital Commission reported to the prime minister.

Pakistan’s target operating model is the Digital Nation Master Plan, which focuses on interoperability based on trust and security.

The third lesson was the importance of maintaining focus. Shaza stressed the need for discipline, measurable targets, key performance indicators and regular follow-up to ensure implementation.

The fourth lesson was to “build rails, not products”. The state should develop data exchange, digital identity, payments and other basic infrastructure before allowing the private sector to build products on top of it, she said.

“Our job is to hand them the backend, the tools, the embedded finance, the parameters of acceptable building, and then watch them do the magic,” she said.

She cited WeChat as an example, saying 97pc of its applications were owned by the private sector.

The fifth lesson, she said, was that governments and nations could not work in silos. “No nation can go at it alone, and nations that join together go further,” she said.

She said the five lessons had helped Pakistan establish the foundations and strategic direction for its digital transformation.

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