Make knowledge fashionable, says Aleema Khanum

Aleema Khanum during an interview with Khaleej Times in Dubai.

There is no shortage of talent available across Pakistan, but what is missing is a centre of excellence where knowledge can be shared and turned into long-term sustainable business ideas, says Aleema Khanum, board member of the Namal Education Foundation and Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan's sister.
Speaking to Khaleej Times at Namal University coordinator, Sadia Baqa's residence in Dubai, Khanum looked back on the journey that saw the creation of Namal College and its evolution towards Imran Khan's vision of a knowledge city.
"We set up the Namal Education Foundation because of Imran Khan's vision," she said. "He had been saying for many years that he wanted to set up a knowledge city; he felt that what Pakistan lacked was a centre of excellence, where you can do research and bring people and knowledge together. In the beginning, I don't think that we were even aware that we lacked this element. We felt that we already had several excellent universities across Pakistan, which created excellent students who are able to make it anywhere in the world. But, this is exactly what he was talking about; the fact that students felt that they had to leave for places such as the UK or Canada for their higher education."
Khanum reminisced on the challenges that came with gathering support for the idea. "We noticed that people were so involved in supporting charities that target primary health and primary education, that by the time they looked at higher education, they were exhausted in their support. We realised that we had to make knowledge fashionable - unless it is fashionable, people are not going to respond to it."
Knowledge, she noted, is not a building; it is the wealth that is found in a person's mind. "It is a great source of pride for me to say that Pakistan has a wealth of knowledge, to the point that we are one of the most enterprising nations in the world; what was missing was a platform for all this knowledge to come together."
This is where the evolution of the concept into Namal Knowledge City began, she revealed. "It has been 10 years of learning for us. First, Namal was a college, and then we thought of it as a university, before we decided on a knowledge city. Then we realised that a knowledge city was a centre of learning that would be around for hundreds of years. Our planning and targets have evolved from 10 years to 20 years to 200 years. It is difficult to imagine what the Knowledge City will look like at the end of those 200 years because it is beyond our lifetime. While we have set very ambitious targets for ourselves, we know that we have to leave behind a legacy and we need people to continue on this legacy."
For this, it is vital that the next generation be involved at every step of the development, and for the membership base of the college to grow. Khanum said that the immediate target in the next 10-15 years is to build a strong membership base. She hopes to see the membership hit the 100,000 mark in her lifetime. At $100 per year, the membership fees, which mainly go into the college's operational expenses, have been hailed as being sustainable.
"We must not take the scholarships away from the students, because the whole concept of Namal is that any student, with incredible talent, on their merit, is given admission," Khanum stressed. "We take the top talent from across Pakistan and offer them the admission; only then do we ask if the students can afford it. The scholarship fund supports the students who can't. We realise that as we increase the number of students, the scholarship fund will be stretched to the point that we might have to reduce the number of scholarships; obviously, we don't want this to happen because we then lose access to the incredible talent that we have seen."
Namal Knowledge City will be a platform with a focus on teaching as well as business. It will focus heavily on creating entrepreneurs, setting up incubators, and accelerator programmes. The research done on campus will be converted into products. One sector that has been identified as being extremely important at Namal Knowledge City is agriculture.
"Food security is a global issue and governments have put it at the top of their agendas for the coming years," Khanum noted. "In line with this, Imran khan has stated that new housing developments will not be built on our most precious agricultural land. We see it as our responsibility to transform the agricultural sector through introducing the latest technologies that improve efficiency and sustainability. It is our responsibility to ensure that issues such as water pollution, because of the use of harmful pesticides, are tackled. We have some excellent agricultural universities in Pakistan that have a wealth of knowledge in terms of research. What we need to do is take this knowledge and turn it into a sustainable business model for the future."
- rohma@khaleejtimes.com

• Pakistan