Smart citizens want to build smart Bangladesh. For that purpose, the ICT Division has set a target of developing 1 million coders by 2025. Coders Trust Bangladesh will teach freelancing, coding and programming to 10,000 teenagers and unemployed youth in the initial phase of implementing the goal.
For this purpose, an agreement was reached at the conference center of the ICT Directorate on Thursday. In the presence of ICT State Minister Zunaid Ahmed Palak and Coder Trust Bangladesh Chairman Aziz Ahmed, two agreements were signed. In the two contracts executed with CoderTrust, Director General of ICT Directorate Md. Mostafa Kamal, Managing Director of Hi-Tech Park Authority Bikarna Kumar Ghosh and CoderTrust CEO Shamsul Haque signed the agreement on behalf of their respective organizations.
Earlier, in the speech of the chief guest at the agreement signing ceremony, ICT State Minister Zunaid Ahmed Palak urged everyone to build a ‘coding revolution’ and said that students and teachers, parents, journalists and people of all walks of life should come forward to build an intelligent, cost-effective smart Bangladesh. To implement that goal, Coder Trust will teach free coding to 10,000 youth in hi-tech parks.
He also said that by the year 2025, programming and coding training will be given to 1 million students and teenagers through 13 thousand Sheikh Russell Digital Labs in 13 selected Upazilas across the country. Master Trainers will be prepared by training ICT officers at field level.
In his speech, the state minister also said that the work of hi-tech parks will be completed in five more districts this year. These include Pirganj in Rangpur, Singra in Natore, Chittagong City, Netrakon and Magura. These parks of 35 thousand square meters area will have incubation on one floor, training on one floor, startup, plug and play and business space on the other.
The state minister also said that in the past 14 years, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has built a developing digital Bangladesh on the principle of public private partnership. He said Prime Minister’s ICT Advisor Sajeeb Wazed has put this technology industry on a strong foundation. On that basis, 555 Joy Digital Service Implementation Training Centers will be established under the EDC project. As a result Coders Trust will get the facility to provide training in all those centers. Through this, our trainees will become smart citizens by acquiring technology knowledge and the economy will also be smart.
At the end of the agreement, he participated in an exchange of views with the stakeholders on the overall issues including the master plan of the Sheikh Hasina Institute of Frontier Technology (SHIFT) project implemented by the Bangladesh Hi-Tech Park Authority under the Department of Information and Communication Technology. After that, a separate meeting was held on the initiative of Bangladesh Association of Software and Information Services on February 23-26, 2023 BASIS Soft Expo. BASIS President Russell T Ahmed and Director Syed Mohammad Kamal participated in the meeting.
