Beyond the Hype: Forging Sri Lanka’s AI-Powered Future
- Samisa Abeysinghe
- Oct 11
- 7 min read
By Samisa Abeysinghe, Founder & CEO, Idasara Digital (Pvt) Ltd
The Big IdeaThe Threat: The World Bank’s October 2025 report correctly identifies the risk of AI disrupting South Asia’s services-based economies, displacing a generation of mid-skilled workers. For Sri Lanka, however, the real threat is not AI itself, but a national failure to distinguish between automatable back-office services and the high-value software engineering where our true potential lies.The Opportunity: Unlike regional peers, Sri Lanka possesses a deep-seated legacy of complex software engineering and product innovation. This unique competency, honed at firms like WSO2, provides a critical advantage. We are not just a services hub; we are a nation of builders. This is our strategic high ground in the age of AI.The Blueprint: I am convinced that Sri Lanka must embark on an aggressive national mission built on three pillars: (1) a radical shift in human capital development, moving from basic literacy to what I call "AI Aptitude" and "Venture Literacy"; (2) the mobilization of a nationwide public-private network to deliver this new literacy at scale; and (3) a strategic focus on empowering a new generation of founders to build AI-native products and high-value technology services.
The World Bank’s latest “South Asia Development Update” has laid down a stark challenge. Titled “Jobs, AI, and Trade,” the report is a meticulously researched and necessary alarm bell for the region. It forecasts significant labor market disruption, identifying a vulnerable cohort of young, moderately educated workers in roles ripe for automation. It correctly points to the outsized impact on the very ICT and business services sectors that Sri Lanka has staked much of its future on.
The report’s diagnosis is accurate, but I believe its implied prognosis for Sri Lanka is incomplete. It frames the challenge through a regional lens that, in my view, underestimates our nation's unique strengths. As someone who has spent years in the trenches of Sri Lanka’s software product industry, including at WSO2, I see a different path forward. The threat is not that AI will automate our services industry; the threat is that we will fail to leverage AI to become a world-class software innovation economy.
This is not a time for incremental policy adjustments. It is a time for a national pivot.
The World Bank’s Diagnosis: A Necessary Reckoning
We must first accept the report’s core findings. It is not an academic exercise; it is a description of our present reality. The report establishes that while only 7% of jobs in South Asia are at high risk of displacement, these are concentrated in white-collar, services-based occupations. Since the launch of Generative AI, there has already been a 20% reduction in job listings for the most exposed roles.
For years, Sri Lanka has celebrated the growth of its BPM and back-office sector. This is precisely the segment of the economy most exposed. The report highlights that these roles have high exposure to AI but low complementarity, making them prime for automation. To ignore this is to walk blindly toward a predictable economic cliff.
At the same time, the report points to the opportunity: a nearly 30% wage premium for jobs requiring AI skills. This is the economic signal we must respond to. The question is not if we should adapt, but how we build a national engine for adaptation at a scale and speed that matches the urgency of the moment.
The Sri Lankan Counter-Narrative: From Services to Software
Here is where my perspective, shaped by building global software products, diverges. The report’s focus on "services" conflates two fundamentally different activities: process-driven services (BPM/BPO) and innovation-driven services (software engineering, product development). The former is about executing a known process cheaper. The latter is about creating a new process, a new tool, a new solution. Generative AI is exceptionally good at automating the former and exponentially augmenting the latter.
Sri Lanka’s competitive advantage has never been in being the cheapest. It has been in our ability to solve complex problems. Our engineers are not just coders; they are architects. This is our national treasure. While the BPM sector will undoubtedly face a painful contraction, our software industry—both in products and high-end services—is poised for explosive growth if we empower it with AI. The mantra must be to create with AI, not to compete against it. AI will not replace a great Sri Lankan software engineer; it will supercharge them.
The National Imperative: An Aggressive Human Capital Offensive
This brings me to my central conviction: our only sustainable path forward is an aggressive, nationwide offensive on human capital development. This cannot be a simple tweak to the education system. It requires a fundamental re-imagining of what it means to be "literate" and "employable" in the 21st century.
My work at Idasara, an AI-driven social enterprise, has been a laboratory for this new model. We have reached over 20,000 people digitally and trained nearly 1,000 in person, along with my personal commitment to training nearly 6,000 executive-grade public sector officials in AI literacy. This experience has proven that a new educational framework is not only necessary but possible. It rests on two core concepts.
1. From Financial Literacy to Venture Literacy
The old model was to train for employment. The new model must be to educate for entrepreneurship. I call this the shift from financial literacy to Venture Literacy. It’s a mindset change from being a passive employee to an active founder and innovator.
It begins with the foundational discipline of the Earn-Save-Invest (E-S-I) framework. This teaches the financial hygiene of a "Home CFO," managing a personal budget like a corporate P&L. But it doesn't stop there. This discipline becomes the launchpad for thinking like a "Venture CFO," where the focus shifts to cash flow, runway, and unit economics. This is the language of startups, and it must become the second language of our youth.
2. Building AI Aptitude from the Ground Up
The second component is what I call AI Aptitude. This is not about turning everyone into a programmer. The Generative AI revolution is precisely about the shift from programming languages to natural language. AI Aptitude is a suite of human core skills:
Articulation & Prompting: The ability to ask clear, structured questions is now the most critical technical skill. Strong literacy and critical thinking are the bedrock of effective prompt engineering.
Critical Thinking & Validation: AI hallucinates and reflects biases. We must teach our students to treat AI not as an oracle, but as an incredibly powerful but flawed intern. The mantra should be to blend AI with human judgment, always validating outputs.
Curiosity & Iteration: Learning with AI is an active, not passive, process. It is about exploring "what if" scenarios, using AI for feedback, and constantly iterating. This is the engine of innovation.
At Idasara Academy, we are already putting this into practice. We are addressing the tragic 30% failure rate in core O/L subjects like Math and Science by providing students with AI-powered tutoring and smart study techniques. By making tools like Google Gemini freely available, we are turning a national challenge into a national opportunity for scalable, personalized learning.
The Delivery Mechanism: A National Public-Private Network
A vision for human capital is useless without a scalable delivery mechanism. We cannot wait for traditional institutions to adapt. We must build a new engine for mass digital and AI education, and I believe the blueprint is a public-private partnership that leverages Sri Lanka’s unique administrative structure.
Having trained thousands of public sector officials, I have seen firsthand the potential of this network. The government's deep reach through its Provincial, District, Divisional Secretariat (DS), and Grama Niladhari (GN) divisions is an unparalleled asset for last-mile delivery.
My proposal is to use this network as the chassis for a national AI literacy drive, powered by the content, tools, and training methodologies developed by social enterprises like Idasara.
Provincial Councils can act as coordinating hubs.
District and DS offices can become centers for workshops and digital resource access.
The GN network can mobilize communities, ensuring we reach the families, women, and youth who are most at risk of being left behind.
This is not a top-down government program. It is a government-enabled, community-driven mission.
Putting AI to Work: From Theory to Traction
What does this AI-empowered nation look like?
For the Founder: The "Venture CFO" uses AI co-pilots to simulate financial models and forecast runway. They use AI for rapid market research, prototyping, and validating ideas with cash before committing to scale. Through our Micro-VC model at Idasara, we are already funding these new founders, providing not just cash but an AI-centric toolkit and consulting to ensure they succeed.
For the Farmer: This is not just about the tech sector. Consider the "Pumpkin Problem" we use in our workshops. A farmer faces a surplus. Without AI, that produce rots. With AI, we can solve this through:
Immediate Logistics: An AI platform for market matching and logistics optimization.
Intermediate Value-Addition: AI-driven research to identify value-added products like pumpkin flour or snacks.
Long-Term Planning: Predictive analytics for planting schedules based on future demand forecasts.
This is how the Farmer becomes a Founder. This is how we apply AI to solve real, grassroots economic challenges.
The Choice Before Us
The World Bank has given us a map that clearly marks the dangers ahead. It is a valuable contribution, and we must heed its warnings. But a map only shows you the terrain; it doesn't tell you where to go.
I am convinced that Sri Lanka's path is not one of defensive adaptation, but of offensive creation. It requires us to look beyond the generalized threat to the services sector and recognize our specific, powerful advantage in software engineering. It demands an unprecedented national mobilization to cultivate a new generation of citizens equipped with AI Aptitude and a founder’s mindset.
The age of passive potential is over. The era of deliberate creation is here. We have the talent, we have the ingenuity, and now we have the tools. The only remaining question is whether we have the will to execute.
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