In the history of the Bangali Nation, the historic 7 March speech is an unforgettable event. In this day, our Father of the Nation, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, declared two significant things. He declared the independence of Bangladesh and economic emancipation. We got our independent Bangladesh after nine months of independence war under his leadership. However, our economic liberation, which is his Sonar Bangla, couldn’t be achieved in his hands as he, along with his many family members, was brutally killed on 15 August 1975. Now, the daughter of the Father of the Nation, our Honorable Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, is fulfilling her father’s dream to create Sonar Bangla, which, in her words, is “Digital Bangladesh,” whereby we will become a middle-income country by 2021 and a developed country by 2041. Now, this newly established “Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman Digital University,” based on its name, has both Bangabandhu and Digital Vision. This is why this university is vital to the Bangali Nation.

Bangabandhu Digital University (BDU) has the mandate to establish, sustain, and support the Digital Bangladesh vision. This is a significant and challenging responsibility for all the staff members, faculty members, and students of this university. This digital university should retain the heart of a traditional university while at the same time will embrace new tastes, new literature, and new values. I am grateful to our Hon'ble Prime Minister for entrusting me with this immense responsibility.

The vision of this digital university is to become the world's leading teaching, learning, and research universities in science, technology, and engineering. Our mission is to reduce the skills gap that exists between the industry and academia. We would like to produce competency-based human resources so that they can immediately contribute to nation building after graduation. Students preparing for the digital age must have an understanding of the basics of STEM.
Our vision is to create an online learning platform for all citizens of Bangladesh. Everybody should be in the workforce. With this online platform, learning will be individualized and may provide more choices for the citizens who, in the past, had only limited choices. This will not replace the traditional classroom but enhance it. We need to promote education that teaches reason, values, analysis, and even invention. Future workers should be flexible, inventive, creative, and able to work in teams.

The future is limitless, but to reach it, we need new concepts of education, learning, and teaching. This digital revolution will sweep away all the old darkness and old practices. We cannot fight it, but we can adapt to it. It is a new age, and it is time for us to acknowledge the value and idea of a digital university.