Shaza Fatima Khawaja
Federal Minister for IT & Telecommunication, Government of Pakistan
I am the Federal Minister for Information Technology & Telecommunication of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. I entered the federal cabinet on 12 March 2024 as Minister of State, the only woman inducted into that cabinet, and on 27 February 2025 I was elevated to Federal Minister, again the only woman Federal Minister in the expanded cabinet, with the oath of office administered by the President of Pakistan and notified in the Gazette of Pakistan Extraordinary.
Educated at Lahore Grammar School and the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS), I hold a Master's degree from the University of Warwick, United Kingdom, and served on the faculty of LUMS for six years before entering public life. I am a third-term Member of the National Assembly of Pakistan. Within the parliamentary community I served as Convener of the Pakistan-Azerbaijan Parliamentary Friendship Group, a relationship that later produced the Asan Khidmat public-service partnership between the two countries, and as General Secretary of the Young Parliamentarians Forum.
Before assuming the IT portfolio, I led nationwide youth and skills programming as Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Youth Affairs and Chairperson of the PM Youth Programme, executed under the 4Es framework of Employment, Education, Engagement and Environment, and as Chief Coordinator for the PM's Skills Development Program, heading the nationwide arrangement to provide skills to youth in diverse disciplines based on national and international employment demand. That grounding in human capital now runs through my stewardship of the technology portfolio: DigiSkills, the Huawei and ZTE training partnerships, the semiconductor workforce initiative and the AI education push all carry the imprint of a minister who came to digital policy through the youth-development door.
As Federal Minister, I am a core member of the Prime Minister's economic team, appearing alongside the Finance Minister and the economic leadership at the government's structural-reforms briefings, and I lead the country's IT export growth plan to reach USD 25 billion over the next five years. I have represented Pakistan at the World Economic Forum (Switzerland), GITEX Global (Dubai), LEAP (Riyadh), Mobile World Congress (Doha), WTDC-25 (Baku), AI for Good Global Summit and the inaugural Global Dialogue on AI Governance (Geneva), and the Digital Cooperation Organization, whose Council Presidency Pakistan assumed for 2026 under my stewardship. Through prioritizing digital governance and the international branding of the country's technology sector, I lead the Digital Pakistan and Techdestination Pakistan campaigns, while major reforms of the telecom and IT sectors are underway to attract FDI and to showcase Pakistan as the next tech destination in the global arena.
"2025 was the year of foundations. The record of the next thirty months is the story of those foundations being poured, and of the structure that rose on them."
Shaza Fatima Khawaja
