A state in South-Eastern Nigeria has already built such a mechanism… The initiative is called ÓKÓBÌ, the One Kindred One Business Initiative, launched in Imo State. Its premise is straightforward: rather than backing one entrepreneur at a time, back a group. An extended family, a village or a student society comes together, selects a business, registers it, and owns it collectively.
To qualify, a venture must be formally registered, group-owned, profit-oriented, professionally managed, properly governed, and demonstrably job creating. Bangladesh’s development story has never been principally one about capital. It is a story about social organisation. Female literacy, immunisation coverage and women’s participation in the workforce were built first, and the growth figures followed.
The Grameen five-member borrower group and the BRAC samity were not welfare instruments but productive ones, and they succeeded precisely because they were collective. That pattern deserves to be remembered as Bangladesh formulates its response to artificial intelligence. Growth, in our national experience, has come through social development, rather than in spite of it. We have quietly set aside the very group-based mechanism that distinguished us.
The instruments we now deploy for young people are almost entirely individual: a training course for one person, a soft loan to one applicant, a youth grant awarded to one recipient at a time. Our young people are entering the artificial intelligence economy alone, one freelancer to one client. So, it pools no skills, builds no institution and disappears when a single recipient fails.
We need to go back to our roots, fund, train and register groups rather than individuals, starting with students, so that young Bangladeshis enter this economy owning something collectively, instead of selling their hours separately.