Bangladesh's programming revolution has gained pace in the last few years, specially after COVID as data suggests.
As per one of the largest software development platforms, GitHub, Bangladesh has emerged as one of the fastest growing programming hubs in the world, along with Nigeria, Pakistan, and SIngapore. As the eighth most populous nation in the globe, Bangladesh has a young demographic dividend of 65.5% of the total population who are potentially paving the way for the country to transform itself as a major programming hub on the planet.
As part of its Innovation Graph project, GitHub publishes data every quarter on 8 key metrics. The metric which is key to understanding Bangladesh’s position in the global programming scene is the ‘Developer’ metric. GitHub defines this metric, ‘Developer,’ as “The number of developer accounts on GitHub in a given economy. This count excludes users that are bots or otherwise flagged as “spammy” within internal systems.”
Number of Github Developers in Bangladesh
Source: Github
No Data Found
215,789 Developer Accounts
In Q1 2020
945,696 Developer Accounts
In Q3 2023
In the first quarter of 2020, Bangladesh had 215,789 active accounts on GitHub which as of the third quarter of 2023, leading up to the month of September, stands at a total of 945,696 Bangladesi developers on GitHub. While from July 2022 to September 2022 (in the 3rd quarter of 2022), the number of developers were 568,145, during the same period in the 3rd quarter of 2023, the platform witnessed a year-over-year (YoY) surge of almost two-thirds. This growth is recorded as the largest proportional increase for any nation in the globe.
Year-over-year Growth in Github Developer Accounts
The percentage growth in accounts from Q3 2022 to Q3 2023 (Source : Github)
No Data Found
295,222 Git Pushes
In Q1 2020
1,522,648 Git Pushes
In Q3 2023
Another important metric is ‘Git Pushes’. According to GitHub, this metric “represents the number of times developers in a given economy uploaded code to GitHub.” In the first quarter of 2020, the number of Git Pushes observed from the developers in Bangladesh was 295,222, which in the third quarter of 2023 has reached 1,522,648.
588,881 Github Repositories
In Q1 2020
2,693,428 Github Repositories
In Q3 2023
The third key metric, ‘Repositories’, “represents software projects in a given economy and is defined by repository count in a given economy.” In the first quarter of 2020, the number of repositories owned by developers or organizations in Bangladesh was recorded 588,881, which in the third quarter of 2023 stands at 2,693,428.
However, the dataset used in the Innovation Graph project has a major limitation. Instead of measuring the code commits or contributions, the data gauges only the number of registered accounts. This can potentially skew the data more heavily towards developers or programmers who are relatively less active in the platform.
More importantly, GitHub does not capture the entire amount of software development happening all across the globe. Though the figures are just a piece of a big pie, it still allows us to notice the rising trend in the programming landscape among different countries.
Especially, in the case of Bangladesh, the growing number of programmers indicate the country’s efforts towards digital inclusion. Such rapid increase in programmers in Bangladesh means Bangladesh has the young, talented and skilled pool of programmers or developers who can lead the country’s IT sector and potentially emerge as a skilled IT labor market for both local and foreign companies. In addition, Bangladesh has witnessed a rapid increase of startups like bKash who can potentially develop the necessary IT infrastructure to lead the transition of Bangladesh from an agrarian economy to a digital and Smart Bangladesh.
Developing nations like Bangladesh have long been neglected by foreign investors and companies, particularly the western tech industry. Perhaps, such reports and figures can serve as an evidence to the rest of the world about Bangladesh’s capacity to become a IT or programming hub.
The cover photo is The International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC), held in Dhaka in November, 2022. (Credits : Daily Sun)
About the Author
Shah Adaan Uzzaman is the Blog Administrator at The Confluence. A former Bangladesh Television Debate Champion and winner of several policy & debate competitions, he is currently a student of IBA, University of Dhaka.