It is extremely encouraging to see the government's Aspire to Innovate (a2i) program's payment processing platform, Ekpay, join hands with Zaytoon Business Solutions to launch "village digital booths" across the country.
This initiative is projected to enable marginalized people in about 90,000 villages across Bangladesh to avail a number of financial services, right from their neighbourhoods -- a bold and ambitious undertaking that should go a long way to addressing the issues we have with regard to financial inclusion.
Any innovative solutions that attempt to simplify the lives of Bangladeshis must be encouraged, especially in an area as vital as financial inclusion. It is a shame that so many in rural Bangladesh continue to be deprived of what can be described as essential financial services, and these booths will be bringing these services to the people, thereby saving them time, cost, and number of visits in order to avail these services.
Moreover, the fact that initially, the booths will be installed in 50 villages in Munshiganj as part of a pilot project is the most sensible approach. Too often, we have made grand plans and invested too much without a clear roadmap, and this gradual scaling is how all initiatives should be implemented.
In addition, the fact that there is a logical timeline -- that we are expecting all 90,000 villages to get these booths within the next three years -- allows us to hold the authorities concerned accountable, while simultaneously telling us that there has been clear thought on how to make the transition from planning to implementation, something that we have repeatedly failed to do.
We hope projects such as a2i continue to be empowered to undertake these smart initiatives that will act as building blocks to eventually reach Smart Bangladesh in 2041.
