JAKARTA - President Joko Widodo talks to four digital talents from Indonesia who are working abroad via video teleconferencing. This dialogue took place at the inauguration ceremony of Sea Labs Indonesia.
One of these digital talents is Ainun Najib who is now working as Head of Analytics Platform and Regional Business Grab in Singapore.
Apart from Ainun, other digital talents are Veni Johanna as Director of Engineering Asana in the United States, Chairuni Aulia Nusapati as Google Software Engineer in the UK and Rangga Garmastewira as Technology Lead for SeoMoney in Singapore.
When talking to Ainun, Jokowi considered himself to have known Ainun for a long time. Jokowi also wooed and asked for advice so that the government could convince them to return to their country.
"I want to ask, how do you get Chai, Veni, Rangga, including Ainun to also return to Indonesia?" Jokowi asked as seen on the Presidential Secretariat's Youtube video, Tuesday, March 1.
Ainun also answered. To Jokowi, Ainun stated that the key for digital talents to come home and help build Indonesia starts from opportunity and stability.
Talking about opportunities, Ainun views Indonesia as having a very good opportunity as an international market player.
"With this opportunity, of course, Indonesia has many opportunities as one of the big players in the third largest market in the world, Southeast Asia," said Ainun.
Meanwhile, for stability, the government really needs to maintain the stability of people's livelihoods. Because, said Ainun, many Indonesian citizens are abroad because they have considerations of career stability to better education for their families compared to being in Indonesia.
"Well, this stability may be a bit tricky. Some may be due to family considerations, some may consider career stability, and I personally consider children's education, I don't want to lose to my sons who go to school in Singapore. So, stability is what matters. maybe it still needs to be fixed in Indonesia," explained Ainun.
Furthermore, the government can start giving advice to them to start returning to the country. In addition, said Ainun, actually these diaspora can help build Indonesia even though they are abroad. The example given by Ainun is the Kawal COVID-19 community.
"The execution can also be done from afar, sir. And we often carry out initiatives that are carried out together by diaspora friends. For example, escorts, it's actually all diaspora children who love their homeland. Although physically they can't come back, but their hearts are always together Indonesia.
Furthermore, Ainun said that the government, in this case the Ministry of Education, Culture, Research, and Technology (Kemendikbudristek) could maintain the Independent Learning system for students.
After hearing Ainun's answer, Jokowi explained that the value of digital potential in Indonesia is quite large. So, according to him, what digital talent overseas is looking for can also be obtained if they return to the country.
"Yes, this is Indonesia's digital potential, it is estimated that in 2030 it will reach 4,531 trillion rupiah. It's very big and the estimates don't go far off. So, my hope is, just go home. Go home. There are many here, there is an opportunity for big companies, all of them are here," concluded Jokowi.
The English, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, and French versions are automatically generated by the AI. So there may still be inaccuracies in translating, please always see Indonesian as our main language. (system supported by DigitalSiber.id)
