Islamabad: The federal government has decided to establish 12 state-of-the-art knowledge parks in the country, which will be developed as Industry-Academia Liaison Centers (IALC), according to news published on October 24.
As per the details, the project named ‘Establishment of Knowledge Park in Pakistan’ will be implemented in two phases. The first phase of the project is expected to be executed at an estimated cost of PKR 939.359 million. The said knowledge parks will be established in major cities. During the initial phase, the proposed parks will be set up in four provincial capital; Lahore, Karachi, Quetta, and Peshawar. Under the second phase, the parks will be established in other cities including Gilgit, Muzaffarabad, Hyderabad, Faisalabad, Multan, Islamabad, Rawalpindi, and Bahawalpur.
Moreover, the project is being sponsored by the Ministry of Planning Development and Special Initiatives and will be implemented by Pakistan Software Export Board (PSEB). The news source mentioned that the project aims to create an ecosystem to promote innovation, job creation, close interaction between stakeholders to share experiences, and collaboration.
Additionally, the ecosystem will offer opportunities for academia and industry to optimize technology education delivery, deepen partnerships for joint research and product development, and develop interfaces to initiate start-ups. Under the industry-academia collaboration, 6,000 IT graduates and undergraduates will be provided in-demand industry-recommended training. Also, 500 faculty members will be trained on in-demand technologies.
The following are the key features of the knowledge park project:
Increasing Pakistan’s software and technology exports with enhanced quality and productivity
Creation of a knowledge workforce readily available to the IT Industry of Pakistan and for export on multiple globally demanded technologies/platforms
Incubator facilities and entrepreneurial services including mentoring, pairing and supporting
Tenant companies will be provided free of cost CIR bandwidth at 01 Mbps/professional during the first 12 months of its tenancy throughout the concurrency of project life.
IALC will help improve the interaction between industry and academia addressing related gaps
Iqra holds BS in International Relations and is passionate about writing engaging content on trending real estate topics. When not working, she is either spending time with family, shopping, or discussing shows & movies.
