Islamabad – As a major step in enhancing bilateral ties, Pakistan and Bangladesh have agreed to set up a new Knowledge Corridor, an endeavor aimed at enhancing collaboration in education, research, and technology.
This historic agreement is designed to capitalize on common cultural heritage and historical legacy to form a forward-looking partnership, with an emphasis on student and faculty exchanges, collaborative research, and projects in science and technology.
The opening of the corridor took place during a historic visit of Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar, the first Pakistan foreign minister’s visit to Bangladesh in 13 years.
Scholarships Offered
Within the new scheme, 500 scholarships will be awarded to Bangladeshi students in the next five years to undertake higher education in Pakistan, 25 per cent of which shall be in the medical field.
Besides these scholarships, the program would also train 100 Bangladeshi civil servants within the same timeframe and would offer specialized professional training.
The number of scholarships offered by the Pakistan Technical Assistance Program has also increased greatly, up to 25 scholarships, to support more academic exchange.
FM’s Visit to Bangladesh
During his two-day visit, Dar held a meeting with Bangladesh Foreign Adviser Touhid Hossain to discuss the whole gamut of bilateral ties, which included trade, diplomacy, culture, education, and humanitarian issues. The top-level interaction forms the preface to a new era of multi-dimensional collaboration.
6 MoUs Signed
After delegation-level discussions, the two sides signed six major agreements to institutionalize and deepen their cooperation. The agreements embrace a visa-free entry protocol for diplomatic and official passport holders, and this is likely to facilitate official exchanges.
They also entered into the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on a Joint Working Group on Trade to further commercial relations. Other significant agreements were the MoU between Foreign Service Academies of both countries and between the Associated Press of Pakistan and Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha, the promotion of diplomatic training and media cooperation.
Besides, an MoU was signed with the Institute of Strategic Studies, Islamabad, and the Bangladesh Institute of International and Strategic Studies to facilitate academic and policy research cooperation. Another agreement was a Cultural Exchange Program in order to improve people-to-people contacts.
The Foreign Office underlined the positive and friendly tone of the talks, adding that, “One of the key outcomes of the meeting is that these initiatives, along with the Knowledge Corridor, will institutionalize and enhance cooperation in trade, education, media, culture, and diplomacy.”
Pakistan’s Broader Knowledge Diplomacy
This diplomatic move is an extension of a general knowledge diplomacy policy that Pakistan has had with other countries in the region. A prominent precedent is the Pakistan-Afghanistan Knowledge Corridor, a scheme that has been running for a number of years and is already producing concrete results.
Within the framework of this initiative, Pakistan has provided thousands of scholarships to Afghan students to offer them the educational opportunities that are often not available to them in their country. Based on official records, Pakistan has issued more than 6,000 scholarships to Afghan students, and many of them have already graduated and gone back to Afghanistan to give back to the society.
The country has also created similar, although less formally titled, educational relationships with Central Asian countries such as Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. Such cooperations tend to be within the strategic economic interests of Pakistan, including the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), which has a cultural and academic exchange component.
These educational interconnections are made to establish a network of professionals and intellectuals that can support economic connectedness, trade, and regional integration.
