DHAKA: Sajeeb Wazed Joy, who earned his status of being a key architect of turning Bangladesh as a digitally- advanced nation by own virtues, said confidence alongside cool mind could help one in overcoming all challenges in world, reports BSS.

“An angry mind can fix nothing. We need to keep cool (while) Confidence in oneself can overcome any challenge in the world,” he told an interaction with youths on the eve of his 47th birthday last evening.  Joy said he followed the above mantra all along as “I have kept moving forward despite all the hardships of my family”.

Centre for Research and Information (CRI), organised the interaction at a hotel coinciding with the 47th birthday of Joy, also the premier’s ICT affairs adviser.

Organisers said Let’s Talk was part of a series of interactions between youths and young policymakers and professionals with distinct performance in their respective fields and the yesterday’s event was the 18th edition of the programme.

Joy recalled the tough time childhood memories describing how the surviving family members were exposed to a state of virtual wilderness after the August 15, 1075 assassination of his grandfather and Bangladesh’s Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman along with most of his family members.

“After that dreadful event and before making it to India, we had a handful of clothing and hardly anything for survival—It was a trail of tough times -- we had to follow an arduous trail via Germany and London,” he said recalling the tests he had to deal in his minor age.  Then aged four, Joy along with his parents and sister had to languish in virtual refuge abroad for six years but the subsequent years showed how he turned around overcoming surges of shocks and eventually equipped himself with knowledge and experience to become an icon for country’s youths.

His quality earned him the scope to be enrolled at the Kennedy School of Governance at Harvard University from where he obtained Masters in Public Administration, ahead of which he earned his Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science, Physics and Mathematics from Bangalore University.

With his tremendous desire to learn more, he completed another Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Engineering at the University of Texas, Arlington in the United States.

Having a political leaning from family by virtue of being Bangabandhu’s grandson, he was one of the key persons behind a campaign that enabled Bangladesh to become a lower middle income country from a lower income one.

The policies he pursued as the premier’s ICT Advisor opened a new horizon of ICT usage in Bangladesh as the country continues to improve rapidly in all indicators of technological advancement including mobile phone users, internet users, accessing public services digitally, mobile banking, and earnings from ICT exports.

Under his stewardship Bangladesh in the past seven years saw a radical transformation and uplift by excelling as the second in ICT outsourcing countries globally. More than $300 million was earned in 2015 from ICT exports.

Digital centres were set up in more than 5,000 union parishads to reach digitization benefits to people’s doorsteps, even in the most rural and inaccessible parts of the country while mobile and internet usage rate, earned Bangladesh the status of a role model particularly for mobile banking services.

Even Microsoft founder Bill Gates applauded Bangladesh’s achievement in this regard.

Joy’s tireless works, however, simultaneously earned him a number of international accolades, bringing in glory for the country as well.

In 2016, he won the “ICT for Development Award” jointly from the World Organisation of Governance & Competitiveness, tri-nation treaty body ‘Plan Trifinio’, international NGO ‘Global Fashion for Development’ and School of Business of University of New Haven, Connecticut in support of the First Anniversary of the Adoption of the UNSDGs and the Importance of ICT and Competitiveness as a Tool for Sustainable Development.

The award came for his far-reaching initiatives to transform the future of Bangladesh into a digital one.

World Economic Forum selected Joy as the first Bangladeshi to be its Young Global Leader for 2007 as an Information Technology (IT) specialist, an honour the global forum confer upon annually to top 250 young leaders of the globe to acknowledge their professional accomplishments, commitment to society and potentials to contribute to shaping the world’s future.