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 who is currently working for a Japanese company.
Overseas Cooperation Volunteers’ Idea Becomes a National Project
We wondered if we could give young people with great potential a weapon in their arsenal: 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 certification system to prove their abilities as engineers. 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.
Mr. Kano has been a JICA staff member for about 5 years since 2010, promoting the project from both the headquarters and the Bangladesh office, and continues to be involved as a researcher. Currently an associate professor at Kanazawa Institute of Technology.
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.
Moving people and the country from the field
The turning point came when we had an opportunity to meet with the then Minister of Science, Information and Communication Technology (METI), who expressed the need for the IT human resource development project. The members of the team decided to present their thoughts and feelings on the theme of “Cobita,” a Bangladeshi poem that 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.
Presentation of Covita’s poem to the Minister of IT
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, 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.
The first ITEE Trial Examination, where the exam questions were to be carried by rickshaw.
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.
Bangladesh’s Accession Ceremony to ITPEC
Japan’s IT Talent Shortage is a Serious Challenge
Contrary to Bangladesh, which has a large population of young people, Japan faces the challenges of a declining birthrate, an aging population, and a shortage of IT human resources. If this situation continues, there is concern that IT services will be delayed and security-related problems will continue to increase.
Miyazaki City, which had been struggling to attract IT firms and a talent exodus, a local company offering e-learning services to overseas companies, and Miyazaki University, which is passionate about Japanese language education, worked together with JICA to create a system to bring 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 awareness of the issues on the part of the recipient. 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 (business, government, and university) had incentives, responsibilities, and a proactive attitude to get involved,” Tasaka recalls.
Mr. Tasaka was instrumental in establishing the “Miyazaki-Bangladesh Model”. After working for Japan Overseas Cooperation Volunteers and an education-related company, he is currently promoting the Bangladesh IT Human Resources Project as a special professor at Miyazaki University.
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, which supported employment in Japan
Behind the success of the program was the Bangladesh IT Engineer Training Program for the Japanese Market (B-JET), a training program for Bangladeshi ICT professionals seeking employment in Japan that began in 2017, By the end of the program in 2020 (Note 1), 280 participants had taken the course, of which 186, or 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.
Bangladeshi IT engineers learning the language and Japanese culture through the B-JET program
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. Also, the fact that a bridge near my home was built with the support of JICA was a big factor,” says Ramozan. I had a good impression of Japan, so when I heard about B-JET, I immediately decided to take the course.
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.
Mr. Ramozan (on the left in the photo on the right) has been in Miyazaki for about 4 years and is working for Spark Japan, an IT company.
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.
A New Form of International Cooperation: The Two-Way Model
Mr. Kano hopes that more young people will be able to seize opportunities in the future. The number of young people who can work in Japan is still very small compared to the overall population. I would like to help create employment opportunities for young people and women in rural areas by providing them with basic IT skills.
The approach of simultaneously solving social issues in Bangladesh, where there are few employment opportunities for young people, and Japan, which is suffering from a shortage of IT personnel, is attracting attention as an unprecedented form of international cooperation that goes beyond the relationship of supporter and recipient. The lessons learned from this project are not limited to IT human resources. I believe that the ideal form of international cooperation in the future is to find points of contact and complement each other’s work by getting to know each other well and understanding each other’s social issues in depth,” says Kano.
© Source JICA
Auto Amazon Links: No products found.
Auto Amazon Links: No products found.