HOW TO THINK ABOUT IT
Center of everything. Ranked as one of the world’s least developed countries until recently, Bangladesh is now one of Asia’s steadiest engines of growth, having tripled its GDP in a decade. That means diversifying from its erstwhile dependence on the ready-made garment industry to sectors such as ceramics, leather goods and footwear. Meanwhile, the country’s making good use of its favorable geographic position: India, China, Japan and other nations are investing in Bangladesh as a regional transit hub to get their goods around the continent.
Don’t be crude. Even with the seventh-largest oil reserves in the world, the UAE knows fossil fuels won’t always be king. That’s why it’s investing in renewable energy projects, selling solar panels and developing wind farms in Caribbean nations like Aruba and Barbados. That’ll grant UAE engineers experience in such projects — key training the country needs in order to hit its goal of generating 27 percent of its domestic energy needs from clean energy by 2021, and 75 percent by 2050.
Let’s get creative. While it’s difficult to measure the size of the Philippines’ creative industries — many of its workers are independent or unregistered — the country sees its talented populace as the key to world economic domination. It launched a concerted effort to rebrand creatives, who’ve long been considered underachievers culturally, as the country’s new superstars. If it can fix its bureaucracy, the Philippines might just have a fighting chance of becoming the Paris of Asia.
Private lives. While Vietnam has the fastest-growing economy in Southeast Asia, there is also a 17 percent unemployment rate among university graduates … compared to the national rate of 2 percent. That’s causing many young people to turn away from public universities and opt for studying abroad or private training programs that better prepare them for the workforce by encouraging English-language fluency and creative thinking.
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