Some of the key development challenges experienced by Pakistan in rural areas relate to access to healthcare, access to employment and income generation activities, access to education, digital literacy and gender . Moreover In addition to planned and inclusive urbanization, there is a dire need to improve availability and quality of SDG-related services in rural areas, including digital services that could serve as a key enabler for economic growth by accelerating rural development, supporting rural economy, contributing to human capital formation, and strengthening the overall resilience and sustainability as well as reversing or mitigating unnecessary urban migration. Thus, undertaking sustainable measures to digitally transform remote and rural communities have become need of the hour to bridge this ICT rural-urban divide as well as coping with the dire and ever-growing need of digital transformation induced by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Transformation of villages into Smart Villages is expected to bring about a positive change in quality of life among people and accelerate their achievement of inclusive sustainable development (Figure 1) by providing them with connectivity and digital technology - enabled services. The initiative is designed with a whole-of-government and whole-of-society approach in mind, so that the connectivity and platforms developed through the programmes can be used by various socioeconomic sectors, such as education, health, agriculture and business. They also capitalize on partnerships and collaboration with private sector companies, academia and civil society, while promoting UN and donor coordination. Figure 2 describes the Problem and Solutions Tree approach for Smart Villages, while Figure 3 describes the implementation process.
