At the UN, Prof Muhammad Yunus calls for global investment in youth-led innovation, social business, and tech to help vulnerable nations like Bangladesh thrive.
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| At the UNGA, Prof Yunus spotlights tech, youth, and social business as tools for sustainable change, calling for global support for countries like Bangladesh. Image: CA's FB |
New York, USA — September 23, 2025:
In a bold address at a high-level United Nations General Assembly side event in New York, Nobel Laureate and Chief Adviser to the Interim Government of Bangladesh, Professor Muhammad Yunus, called on global leaders to embrace a new era of development—one fueled by technology, youth innovation, and social business models.
Speaking at the event titled “Social Business, Youth, and Technology,” Yunus positioned Bangladesh as a case study in resilience, highlighting its ongoing transition out of Least Developed Country (LDC) status, despite facing enormous pressures from the Rohingya refugee crisis, climate change, and global economic instability.
Rather than relying on traditional aid models, Yunus urged the global community to invest in technological empowerment and digital inclusion, especially among young people. He warned that cutting UN development budgets or scaling back technical support would undermine progress, particularly for nations standing on the edge of transformation.
Yunus argued that youth and technology are now central drivers of sustainable development, especially when paired with the principles of social business—enterprises designed to solve social problems through self-sustaining innovation, not profit maximization. In contrast to legacy systems of foreign aid or top-down intervention, he advocated for scalable, tech-enabled solutions rooted in local leadership and entrepreneurial ecosystems.
“The road to a better world lies not in past failures, but in today’s innovations,” Yunus told the audience. “Technology in the hands of young people can create entirely new systems of development—systems that are inclusive, ethical, and sustainable.”
His remarks arrive at a critical juncture for countries like Bangladesh, where rising sea levels, economic inequality, and mass displacement demand new forms of climate-tech, digital infrastructure, and inclusive policy frameworks. Yunus called for the global scaling of tech-based social ventures, supported by international cooperation and multilateral innovation funding.
His delegation—comprising political figures from across Bangladesh’s opposition spectrum—lent additional significance to the message. The presence of leaders like BNP’s Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir and Jamaat-e-Islami’s Syed Abdullah Muhammad Taher indicated a coordinated effort by Bangladesh’s interim leadership to present a unified political and technological development agenda on the global stage.
The Chief Adviser’s speech framed the global development challenge not as a matter of charity, but of strategic innovation. In his view, the world's most complex problems—climate change, migration, poverty—can only be tackled through interdisciplinary collaboration between technologists, social entrepreneurs, policymakers, and youth leaders.
Prof Yunus emphasized that countries in transition should not be penalized for their vulnerability but empowered with the tools to shape their own future, particularly through AI, data science, clean energy tech, and digital finance platforms designed to close opportunity gaps.
His call-to-action was clear: if global institutions are serious about sustainable development, they must mobilize technology not just for efficiency, but for equity. The world cannot afford to ignore the solutions already being created by youth-led startups and community-driven innovation models.
Whether Yunus’s vision gains traction remains to be seen. But in placing technology and youth at the heart of his development strategy, he has challenged the global community to rethink what progress looks like—and who gets to define it.