Faria Rahman

Bangladeshi tech entrepreneur bridging digital divide for rural women

Faria Rahman (born 1985) founded Sheba, Bangladesh's first women-led tech hub, creating 15,000+ jobs for female coders by 2023. Her Code for Change initiative taught 3,000 rural women app development skills, leading to 400+ startups like AgriConnect (connecting farmers to markets) and HealthLink (telemedicine platform). These ventures increased rural women's income by 300% in 5 years.

In 2018, she pioneered the Digital Village program providing low-cost smartphones and internet to 500 villages. This enabled 200,000+ women to access e-commerce platforms, boosting local GDP by $28 million annually. Her work inspired the Bangladeshi government's 2021 National Digital Literacy Program.

Rahman's 2020 TED Talk 'Coding Equality' has 2.3 million views, influencing UNESCO's 2022 Global Girls in ICT report. She created the Sheba Fund providing $500,000/year in grants to women tech entrepreneurs. Forbes named her 2023 Asia's 'Most Innovative Social Entrepreneur.'