Muslim world should develop intellectual capabilities in S&T field: President

Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: President Dr Arif Alvi has said that the Muslim world should utilize its financial resources for providing quality education to its youth and enhancing the intellectual capabilities of the Ummah so that indigenous knowledge may be produced in Muslim countries.
He added that Science and Technology were playing a pivotal role in the modern world as they affected human development in all aspects of life and could be used to transform the Muslim world. The President said this while chairing the 31st Executive Committee meeting of COMSTECH, at Aiwan-e-Sadr Wednesday.
President Dr Arif Alvi is the Chairman of the OIC Ministerial Standing Committee on Scientific and Technological Cooperation (COMSTECH). Secretary General OIC, Mr Hissein Brahim Taha, Kazakhstan’s Minister for Education and Science, Sayasat Nurbek, Nigeria’s Minister for Science and Technology, Dr Ogbonnaya Onuh, Palestine’s Minister for Communications and Information Technology, Mr Ishaq Sidr, Qatar’s Under Secretary of Ministry of Education, Professor Dr Ibrahim Saleh Al-Nuaimi, President of King Abdul Aziz City for Science and Technology of Saudi Arabia, Dr Munir M Eldesouki, UAE’s Minister of State for Public Education and Advanced Technology, Ms Sarah bin Yousif Al-Amiri, Representative of the Chair of 14th OIC Summit, Saudi Arabia, Representative of the Chair of 2nd OIC Summit of Science & Technology, UAE joined the meeting virtually.
Secretary Ministry of Science & Technology, Pakistan and Coordinator General of COMSTECH gave a briefing regarding the agenda of the 31st Executive Committee meeting of the COMSTECH. During the meeting, the President said that the sharing of knowledge by the developed world with the recipient countries was likely to diminish due to copyright laws, which necessitated for the Muslim world to take collective and meaningful steps to generate indigenous knowledge in critical areas by promoting Research & Development (R&D) in the field of Science and Technology.
The President said that the Muslim world, under the auspices of OIC, may develop out-of-the-box solutions to bridge the knowledge and R&D gap between the developed and the Muslim world. He added that distance and virtual learning modes of imparting education should be further developed and adopted at a faster rate by the Muslim world to open the doors of high-quality knowledge, information and education, particularly in IT sectors, for the students. This, he added, would be especially beneficial for the students of Least Developed Countries and those countries which were lagging behind in educating their youth.