Huawei named the six Bangladeshi winners of its Seeds for the Future programme on Thursday at the Huawei Bangladesh Academy in Dhaka. They are Mohammad Azmain and Arpon Saha of Dhaka University, Al Mumtahina and Sajid Ahmed Chowdhury of the Islamic University of Technology, Farsia Kawsar Chowdhury of BUET and Mayisha Farzana of RUET. More than 600 undergraduates applied; the six were chosen on the strength of the technology projects they submitted, and they will now travel to Huawei’s headquarters in China for training on the company’s latest technology.
What the programme is
Seeds for the Future is Huawei’s global student programme, running since 2008 in more than 130 countries and in Bangladesh for the tenth year. The format is a week or two at the company’s Shenzhen campus and in Beijing: technical courses on 5G, cloud and AI taught by Huawei engineers, a group project, visits to the company’s labs, and a cultural programme. Past editions ran online during the pandemic; this one returns to travel. Alumni say the technical content is real but the lasting value is the network — a cohort of a few hundred South Asian engineers who met in Shenzhen, and a line on a CV that Huawei’s regional hiring managers recognise.
Why a telecom vendor does this
“Huawei is committed to building a better, connected world,” said Pan Junfeng, Huawei’s South Asia president and Bangladesh CEO, describing the aim as equipping young Bangladeshis with skills and a role in the country’s digital transformation. That is true and it is also not the whole answer. Huawei supplies a large share of Bangladesh’s mobile network equipment — Grameenphone, Robi and Banglalink all run on its gear — and is excluded from networks in the United States, Britain and much of Europe on security grounds. Programmes like this one build goodwill in the markets that remain open, among the engineers who will one day sit in the procurement meetings. The chief guest was Song Yang, counsellor at the Chinese embassy; the programme is, unambiguously, part of China’s presence here.
For the students
None of which is a reason not to go. The training is free, the exposure is genuine, and a Huawei alumnus is as employable at Ericsson or Nokia as at Huawei. The one thing to understand before boarding is that the trip is a recruitment and a public-relations exercise as well as a course, and that the photographs will be used. IUT vice-chancellor Mohammad Rafiqul Islam was special guest at the ceremony.
