In recent times, the discourse around Bangladesh’s upcoming LDC graduation has primarily hovered around the issues of deferment.

We are pleased to present this special anniversary supplement as part of The Daily Star’s 35th year of publication, focusing on the Bangladesh economy at a time of adjustment, reflection, and renewed possibility.

If you live in Dhaka, you don’t just live in a city; you live in a vertical village. Whether you are in a posh complex in Gulshan or a crammed building in Mirpur, the experience of being a "tenant" is a universal bond that unites us all.

The story begins behind an abandoned factory of the British American Tobacco company, where for years a stretch of land had served as an informal dumping ground. No one went there unless they had to. It was a forgotten place. When the owners of the adjacent property sought to redevelop the grounds, the earliest proposals were conventional: build a road, construct a checkpoint, add infrastructure for car parking

Beige, cream, oat, mushroom, and sand are shades that sit comfortably with our light, our heat, our dust, and our cultural palette. Done right, they create a pleasant, natural backdrop

AI has slipped into daily life with a kind of stealth. One moment you are using it to tidy up an email or translate a paragraph, and the next you are letting it outline your presentation, draft your report, suggest your next move, even tell you what you feel.

Something has quietly changed in Bangladesh’s digital economy over the past five years, and not everyone has noticed.

When Bangladesh’s Ministry of Youth and Sports formally designated esports as an official sport in July 2025, it marked a significant departure from the country’s previous posture towards competitive gaming.

Data has become the raw material of modern power. It fuels artificial intelligence, guides advertising, shapes credit decisions, and underpins everything from ride hailing to national identity systems.

The notion that artificial intelligence (AI) is going to rewire the basis of our understanding of many entities, even at this point in time, seems a little far-fetched.

For a long time, success in Bangladesh came with a passport stamp, and the highest form of validation was going abroad, either to study or to work, and to finally make it. Staying back was often framed as a compromise, a temporary stop, or worse, a failure of ambition.

In 2021, when I started my undergraduate degree in English, I remember investing a painstaking amount of time to brainstorm and proofread for my foundation English course assignments in an effort to protect my grade.

I distinctly remember attending a class lecture in November 2022, when ChatGPT was first released to the public, where my instructor expressed his unease about the artificial intelligence (AI) tool and what it meant for learning and teaching.

Although often said in jest, the phrase “the great Bangladeshi dream is to leave Bangladesh” is becoming a reality.

On September 1, 2025, Bangladesh formally entered the 5G era when Robi Axiata became the first operator to switch on commercial fifth-generation services in select areas of Dhaka, Chattogram and Sylhet.

For today’s youth, the future no longer arrives quietly. It updates itself overnight; one morning, you wake up to find that a task you spent years learning can now be done by a machine in seconds, and by evening, there is a new tool promising to do even more.

Just before sunrise in 2030, a grade 8  student named Rafi sits at a wooden desk in a tin-roofed home outside Rangpur. His mother is boiling water for tea.

Bangladesh is approaching a moment when digital policy will increasingly determine economic outcomes.

Let’s walk down memory lane to 1971, when a new nation had just emerged after a brutal nine-month war.

Bangladesh is living through a paradox. On one hand, we are more connected than ever.