NEW YORK: Pakistan has a chance to become a maker of artificial intelligence rather than merely a consumer of it, according to Aamir Ibrahim, chief executive of JazzWorld, the country's largest telecommunications operator.
Ibrahim made the remarks in an interview with Pakistan TV Digital on the sidelines of an event in New York, where JazzWorld's parent company, VEON, reported second-quarter earnings and celebrated the first anniversary of its Ukrainian subsidiary Kyivstar's listing on the Nasdaq.
The comments reflect a broader transformation underway at JazzWorld, a 32-year-old connectivity provider in Pakistan that has spent recent years repositioning itself as what Ibrahim called an "Intelligent ServiceCo."
The rebranding from Jazz to JazzWorld, he said, was a deliberate move: the company chose not to call itself "Jazz Pakistan," a decision meant to signal ambitions reaching beyond national borders to the Pakistani diaspora and international markets.
Central to that strategy, Ibrahim said, is JazzCash, the company's mobile financial services arm, which he described as playing a pivotal role in the government's push toward a cashless economy. He estimated that roughly 80% of all digital payments in Pakistan now flow through the platform.
The company's ambitions have taken on new dimensions with the launch of the Sky 47 data center in Islamabad, which Aamir Ibrahim cast as a step toward positioning Pakistan as a producer of artificial intelligence capabilities rather than a passive importer of technology developed elsewhere.
But he argued that any such progress would be incomplete without addressing digital inclusion, particularly for women, whom he described as essential to the country's economic prospects.
"I don't know of any country that has progressed if it's left its women behind," Ibrahim said. "So for Pakistan to move forward, the women have to come along with the men to contribute to the economy."
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