Bring Bangladeshi IT Professionals to Japan! New International Cooperation Connecting Local Communities to the World
Connecting Bangladesh, which has excellent IT human resources but is having difficulty finding work, and Japan’s regional cities, which are suffering from a shortage of digital human resources. This new form of international cooperation is attracting attention from local governments and companies nationwide. The catalyst for this new form of international cooperation is JICA’s IT human resource development project. The manga “Bangladesh IT Human Resources for Japan’s Regional Development: From Cooperation Corps to Industry-Government-Academia Collaboration” chronicles the project’s 14-year history. We interviewed two key persons who were the driving force behind the project, as well as a Bangladeshi IT engineer currently working for a Japanese company, to coincide with the release of “Bangladesh IT Talent Leads to Japan’s Regional Development: From Cooperation Corps to Industry-Government-Academia Collaboration,” a manga that chronicles a 14-year project.
An idea from an overseas cooperative turned into a national project: “Why don’t we give young people with great potential a weapon in the form of an IT certification?
The IT Human Resource Development Project began 14 years ago in 2008 with the thoughts of JOCV members who were sent to Bangladesh as IT officers.
Many Bangladeshi young people can speak English, and they are talented and smart. But at the time, Bangladesh did not have a national qualification system to prove their abilities as engineers, and the young people were unable to chart their future career paths,” says Takeshi Kano, who later took over the baton from the team members and contributed to the advancement of the project as a JICA official. He says that learning IT as a student changed the course of his life.
The team members focused on a certification exam called the ITEE. The Information Technology Engineers Examination (ITEE) is the largest national IT certification examination in Asia, and is taken by 430,000 people a year in Japan. The team members began working hard to introduce the ITEE so that young engineers would be recognized as ready-to-work human resources.
Involving many stakeholders, such as the local IT companies association, Dhaka University, and Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI), we went through a process of trial and error, and a major turning point came when we met with the then Minister of Science, Information and Communication Technology. The members of the team decided to convey the need for the IT human resource development project and also to send their thoughts to the Minister by singing a Bangladeshi poem, “Kovita,” which the Minister was fond of.
When he began reciting a poem in Bengali titled “Let’s build a bridge between Japan and Bangladesh’s IT sector,” the mood in the room changed dramatically. The minister, who had been silent for some time, came back with the reply, “Let’s make sure that many people can cross the bridges that have been built. This is exactly the kind of thinking that comes out of JICA’s field-oriented approach. We go into the field, live with the people, and understand and respect their culture. This attitude must have touched the minister’s heart,” said Kano.
With the Minister’s endorsement, the project took off: in 2012, it became a JICA technical cooperation project, and in 2013, a trial test was scheduled to be conducted. However, the road ahead was fraught with difficulties that are unique to developing countries. On the day of the trial, there was a hortar (strike) and all public transportation came to a halt.
Mr. Kano, who had been directly in charge of the project in the area since 2012, and his colleagues transported the test questions by rickshaw and managed to implement the test. Despite fears that no one would show up, a whopping 158 of the 332 applicants showed up on foot or by other means. I was very happy. The examiners from Japan stayed overnight at the venue from the day before, and I was so relieved when it was over without incident,” said Kano.
Finally, in 2014, Bangladesh became the seventh member (six members as of 2022) of the IT Professional Examination Council (ITPEC). The future of Bangladeshi youth as global IT engineers is now open to them.
Japan’s IT human resource shortage is a serious issue Contrary to Bangladesh, which has a large population of young people, Japan has a declining birthrate, an aging population, and a shortage of IT human resources. If this situation continues, there is concern that delays in IT services and problems related to information security will continue to increase.
Miyazaki City, which had been struggling to attract IT firms and a talent exodus, a local company offering e-learning programs for overseas students, and Miyazaki University, which is passionate about Japanese language education, worked together with JICA to create a system to attract IT personnel from Bangladesh to Miyazaki. The result is a system that attracts IT personnel from Bangladesh to Miyazaki.
Shinnosuke Tasaka was a key figure in bringing Miyazaki City and JICA together and creating what was later called the “Miyazaki-Bangladesh Model. The success of this model was due first of all to the fact that the recipients were aware of the challenges they faced. I think the success of this model was due to the fact that the recipients were aware of the issues they were facing, and that each organization (companies, government, and universities) had incentives, responsibilities, and a proactive attitude to get involved,” Tasaka recalls.
As a result, more than 50 IT engineers from Bangladesh will be employed by a total of 24 companies in Miyazaki Prefecture from 2017 to 2022. The number, which is the second highest after Tokyo, has attracted attention from local governments and companies nationwide, and inquiries and inspections are constantly coming in.
JICA’s B-JET program supported job placement in Japan Behind the success of the program was the Bangladesh IT Engineer Training Program for the Japanese Market (B-JET), an initiative launched by JICA in 2017. By the end of the program in 2020 (Note 1), 280 participants had taken the course, of which 186 (nearly 70%) were employed as engineers by companies in various parts of Japan, including Miyazaki.
Note 1: After the end of JICA support, the project is still ongoing under the initiative of Miyazaki University, local universities, and private companies.
Hossain Mohamad Ramozan, who works as a programmer at a system development company in Miyazaki, is one such person; he came to Japan in 2018 at the age of 25 as a second-term B-JET student. On why he wanted to work in Japan, he says, “I have a dream to start my own business someday, and I wanted to acquire advanced IT skills for that purpose. Japan has not only a high level of IT, but also a sense of familiarity with the same Asian country. I also felt a sense of familiarity with Japan because it is an Asian country, and the bridge near my home was built with the support of JICA,” says Ramozan. I had a good impression of Japan, so when I heard about B-JET, I decided to take the course immediately.
She says that the Japanese business manners she learned during her training, such as “punctuality” and “report, report, report,” were very new to her. But she says it has helped her communicate with her boss, colleagues, and customers at her current workplace. My encounter with B-JET has changed my life,” he said. I would like to work in Japan for the next 10 to 20 years, and in the future, I would like to use my experience and network to start my own business and become a bridge between Bangladesh and Japan,” she said in fluent Japanese.
For companies in rural areas, where it is difficult to secure IT personnel, the benefit of hiring excellent IT engineers who can speak Japanese is significant, and in some cases has even led to revitalization within the company. There have been some cases where the hiring of IT engineers who can speak Japanese has been a great advantage for local companies that have difficulty in finding IT personnel, and it has even revitalized the company. But as more and more young Bangladeshis come to Japan with a strong desire to work in Japan, a welcoming community atmosphere has developed, and this has provided an opportunity for citizens to experience diverse values and cultures,” says Tasaka.
© Source JICA
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