France is committed to work with Bangladesh in building a smart Bangladesh on digital, cyber and trade areas and even in building satellite. French ambassador to Bangladesh, Marie Masdupuy, expressed her delight to be a partner of Bangladesh in this journey. She conveyed the stance of French government while speaking to reporters after a meeting with State Minister for ICT Zunaid Ahmed Palak in the conference room of the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications of the Secretariat on Monday.
Chairman of Bangladesh Satellite Company Limited Dr. Shahjahan Mahmud was present at that time. The meeting discussed how France can work with Bangladesh in the future in the three fields of education, technology and training. EDGE Project Policy Advisor Abdul Bari Tushar too was present.
Regarding the meeting, State Minister Zunaid Ahmed Palak said that Bangladesh is going to participate for the first time in Europe and France’s biggest technology festival ‘VivaTech’ in a few days. During the visit, representatives of 12 reputed IT companies of the country will meet there with about 120 companies of France. The Bangladesh pavilion will showcase the country’s technological capabilities and potential.
The minister told journalists that, we will visit the satellite lab of Airbus. We are entering into a formal agreement with France’s ‘School-Forty-Two’ to develop the future generation of Bangladesh as skilled, competent smart citizens in frontier technologies like AI, Robotics, Data Analytics, Machine Learning, Microchip Designing, Cyber Security etc. France’s ‘Le Gobelin School for Animation’ is giving us technical support to create an animation lab. This is also one of the objectives of this trip to France.
‘Airbus has made some proposals to build our own skills and capabilities and we have taken that into consideration. We hope to jointly assemble satellites with Airbus in the country and develop skilled manpower in satellite technology,” added Palak.