• The two teams from Kenya shared the First Prize and 3rd Prize respectively alongside Nigeria, China, UK, and Egypt.
• Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, all the training and competition activities were completed online.
Image: REUTERS
African ICT students emerged among the world’s best at the Huawei ICT Competition Global Final, taking top prizes at an online awards ceremony held this weekend.
The two teams from Nigeria won grand prizes, while teams from Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, and Mauritius all earned the highest level of achievement for the first time in what is seen as one of the biggest ICT events globally.
Despite being the newest contestants of the Huawei ICT Competition since 2017, African students have made stunning progress this year.
Only five African teams made it to the global final and reaped only one-third prize in last year's competition, compared with 13 teams this year, winning a total of seven medals.
The two teams from Kenya shared the First Prize and 3rd Prize respectively alongside Nigeria, China, UK, and Egypt.
Catherine Wambui from the Multimedia University of Kenya is one of the winners at the Global Final.
Wambua encouraged more students at the university and college to join the ICT Competition as it is highly practice-oriented.
“The Competition has really enabled me to get the practical skills and knowledge especially in my field of Networking. It has also helped improve on Teamwork, I encourage my fellow students to take part in the ICT Competition to test and sharpen their ICT Skills,” She said.
The students’ achievement is due to African countries’ continued recognition and efforts to build a competitive ICT talent pool among the young generation, who will be an indispensable accelerator for the continent’s post-Covid recovery and digitisation.
The victorious students had a good reason to rejoice after over 10 months of hard work and fierce competition all the way from national screening contests, the regional final, and the Global final.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, all the training and competition activities were completed online.
Dianarose Nasipwonyi who led a Kenyan Team and participated in the first Innovation Competition in Africa expressed appreciation to Huawei for the opportunity to join the competition this year alongside UK, Singapore, China, and Spain.
“During the development of our Mazingira Team Project, I have learned a lot on Huawei AI and Cloud platform. The experience has really made me into a better innovator and has increased my skills. I hope to develop solutions for Africa with this new found knowledge.”
The ICT Competition has diversified to include an innovation competition that enables students at university to develop innovative solutions towards solving existing global challenges.
The innovation competition will focus on IoT, AI, and Cloud.
Hou Tao, Global Vice President of Huawei, highlighted the impressive enthusiasm of the students, which is much needed for Africa’s digital inclusion in the era when the gravity of workplace skills is already shifting online. “
As a private company serving the African market for over 20 years, Huawei has dedicated itself to and will always remain a trusted partner of governments and academia in building a competitive ICT talent pool, strengthening capacity building and increasing people’s digital competence,” Hou said.
Over the past five years, Huawei has signed cooperation agreements with over 250 universities in 14 Sub-Saharan countries, including Nigeria, Kenya, and South Africa.