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Bill Gates receives hero's welcome on tour of Hanoi university campus

Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, left, is welcomed by thousands of Hanoi University of Technology students as he arrives at the campus in Hanoi yesterday. Bill Gates was on a 24-hour visit to Vietnam. PHOTO: AFP

Microsoft chairman Bill Gates received a rock-star's welcome at a Vietnamese university yesterday, with thousands of students crushing forward to get a glimpse of the world's richest man.

Fresh from dining at his US home with Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) this week, Gates met early yesterday with Vietnamese Prime Minister Phan Van Khai.

He later spoke at the Hanoi University of Technology and presented 10 scholarships for Microsoft's official training center in Hanoi.

Gates praised the potential of Vietnam's fledgling high-tech sector, saying he was pleased to hear that Microsoft's primary computer chip maker, Intel Corp, is building a US$320 million chip assembling plant in Ho Chi Minh City.

"I have no doubt that other IT manufacturers will see the kind of skills and the economic favor in coming to this market," Gates said.

"Vietnam should also be working on the software development side, the outsourcing side," he said.

The fervor that greeted Gates, 50, in Vietnam -- at least one student was crushed in the melee and had to be carried away -- reflects the fast-growing but still-impoverished communist country's eagerness to follow the example of India and China and move into higher-wage technology jobs.

"I've idolized Mr. Bill Gates for a long time now, and I longed for a chance to meet and see him in person," said Nguyen Duy Hung, 20, a computer sciences student at Hanoi National University. "My dream is to start my own software company like him."

However, Hung said that Vietnam's universities still offer only limited training for ambitious young students.

"Universities only give us basic knowledge," he said. "We have to access to the Internet ourselves to get advanced information and knowledge, and learn from other more advanced programmers."

Vietnamese software and technology companies last year exported only US$70 million worth of software, compared to India's US$12 billion.

Still, local IT companies are growing at a rate of 30 percent each year and the government has set ambitious goals of training 100,000 software designers in the next several years.
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