Despite the government's ongoing efforts, rapid urbanization in major urban areas of Vietnam continues to face significant structural challenges. These challenges manifest as overloaded infrastructure, leading to limited capacity for new schools, traffic congestion, urban flooding, pollution, shortages of electricity, and insufficient public services. Consequently, these problems exacerbate social inequality and diminish the attractiveness of major cities like Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi for investors, as evidenced by their notable decline in the recent PCI index. In terms of digital and smart transformation, the relatively low uptake of online services by as well as low productivity of the entire economy necessitates solid solutions to enhance people's digital skills.
To address these pressing issues, Resolution No. 06-NQ/TW was issued by the Central Party Committee in early 2022, outlining crucial targets for Vietnam's future. One key objective is the establishment of an international network of smart urban areas at the national and regional levels. The aim is to have three to five urban areas recognized internationally and regionally by 2030. Looking ahead to 2045, the vision entails an interconnected, unified, and well-balanced urban system that effectively combats climate change, mitigates natural disasters and epidemics, protects the environment, and showcases distinctive, green, modern, and intelligent architectural designs.
Although Vietnam possesses several advantages that position it favourably for smart and sustainable cities development, such as its youthful population, rapidly growing economy, and strong government commitment to innovation, it is vital to recognize that progress in the field of smart cities in the ASEAN has been dynamic. Other countries in the region have made substantial strides, necessitating Vietnam's bold actions toward smarter and more sustainable development. Furthermore, the government's commitment to achieving Net Zero emissions by 2050 has intensified the urgency for the country to expedite its endeavours in this direction.
Following the success of the first SSC forum, this year’s Smart and Sustainable Cities (SSC) Forum focuses on two disparate, but equally significant demands of Vietnam’s developing cities and population: the growing demand for more energy, and cleaner energy, as well as the growing need for a digitally competent workforce, to reach the goals set in Decision 950 of developing a foundation for Smart cities from 2018-2025 with an orientation toward having smart, liveable and sustainable cities by 2030. Part of this aggressive goal requires resource efficiency both in terms of sustainable energy production and capacity building for the human resources needed to create transition to greener cities.
The demand for electricity in Vietnamese cities is constantly growing and in May of 2023, several cities cut public lighting to reserve the energy for households and manufacturing (Reuters 2023). The concerns over heatwaves and large-scale drought have also caused Electricity of Vietnam (EVN) to warn of possible electricity blackouts throughout the summer of 2023 due to lessening production via hydropower (Vietnamnet 2023). This power deficit has the Vietnamese government planning to raise its electricity imports by 5 gigawatts by 2030. While the country’s demands for energy grows rapidly it is constrained and counterbalanced by the government’s commitment to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, thus demonstrating the critical need to develop sustainable power sources, like solar power to ensure a continued development of Vietnam’s urban areas.
Coupled with the challenge of energy scarcity is the significant lack of digitally competent human resources, which is, arguably, the most essential component of developing Smart cities. In the Price Waterhouse Coopers (PWC) Vietnam Digital Readiness Report, “84% of Vietnamese respondents indicated a need for a skills framework to guide Industry 4.0 capability development” indicating a lack of clarity about the skills needed for digital competency. Another PWC report indicated that only 14% of employers felt their employees had a clear view of the skills needed for digital transformation. Echoing the PWC reports is a study from the Vietnam National University, which found that the government’s policy fails to provide a “thorough conceptualization of digital competence” leading to “difficulties and inconsistencies” during implementation (Nguyen et al. 2022).
Along with the lack of clarity of the digital skills needed, Vietnam’s digital skills are low on a number of indices. Vietnam’s rating for digital skills under the 2022 Global Talent Competitiveness Index (GTCI) Global Knowledge category was 82 out of 133. Vietnam’s Ministry of Labour – Invalids and Social Affairs (MOLISA) cited that only 11% of the domestic labour force is highly skilled. At a Manpower Group Workshop held in partnership with MOLISA in 2021, it was highlighted that with only 11.6% of highly skilled workers, the Vietnamese workforce lags behind regional neighbours like Thailand, Philippines or Malaysia (Manpower 2021). The World Economic Forum competitiveness Report in 2019 has Vietnam lowest in terms of digital skills in comparison to competing neighbours: Singapore, Malaysia, Philippines, China, and Thailand. Finally, a World Bank report (2021) warns that Vietnam could lose as many as two million jobs by 2045 if the country does not address the low number of digitally skilled labour.
This SSC Forum will tackle Vietnam’s deficits of energy and digitally competency, starting with a white paper launch and keynote presentations, to provide will provide an overview and context of the two issues. Following the four opening sessions, will be two parallel tracks delving into more specific details of the two topics to explore solar power energy and digital competency in Vietnam and regional context.
This year's SSC Forum is being co-hosted by
There will be more than 250 attendees at this Forum (online and offline), which includes:
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