Twelve Nigerian students from the University of Ibadan, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, and University of Port Harcourt have qualified for the Huawei Global ICT competition following an excellent performance in the cloud and network examination at the just concluded Huawei sub-Saharan Africa region ICT competition finals.
The Huawei ICT Competition, which generally covers examination on the latest ICT technologies such as cloud computing, artificial intelligence, mobile networks and big data, is believed to be the biggest of its kind in Africa featuring 123 student-talents from 13 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, grouped into 41 teams (28 network track and 13 cloud track teams).
At the sub-Saharan regional finals, the students competed for 18 prizes and 12 admission tickets for the Huawei Global ICT Competition Final in October 2020, which will attract more than 300 other student-talents from 66 countries across the globe.
Team Nigeria had 15 students grouped into five teams who competed under the network and cloud segment.
The Nigerian students had a great performance which guaranteed four of the Nigerian teams’ tickets to the Global ICT Competition.
Two teams emerged first position and third position respectively in the Cloud examination, while two other teams of the Nigerian students emerged second position in the Network examination.
Due to the pandemic, the Huawei ICT sub-Saharan regional competition was held virtually. The Nigerian students participated from the Huawei Technologies Nigeria offices in Abuja and Lagos respectively.
The Huawei ICT competition which was established to foster ICT learning in Africa and bridge the gap between theoretical study and practical experience typically comprises of a national preliminary contest, regional semi-final and a Global final.
Following a successful run at the national finals of the Huawei ICT Competition which was held on December 10th, 2019 and had over 23,000 Nigerian students in the contest, 15 students were selected to represent Nigeria at the sub-Saharan Africa Region ICT competition finals which held on September 10th and 11th, 2020 to determine those who will be selected to participate the Huawei Global ICT Competition finals.
One of the Huawei Channel Training Managers for ICT Talent Ecosystem Development in Nigeria, Mr. Weilei, said: “The Huawei ICT competition was first launched in Nigeria in 2017 and currently runs under the Huawei ICT Academy which is in collaboration with more than 90 Nigerian universities. The Huawei ICT Academy was established to train students for free in the latest internationally relevant ICT skills in subjects such as Networks, Cloud Computing and Big Data. As at today, over 10,000 Nigerian students have benefitted.”
He added that “there are 150 instructors from partnering institutions, with 120 of them acquiring various Huawei certifications in different technology track and 250 training classes in various technology tracks, in Routing & switching, storage, cloud services, big data, W-Lan, security and AI delivered by Huawei certified instructors.”
Director, Huawei Nigeria Enterprise D&S Department, Ms. Melissa Chen, said: “The competition-related training has helped over 300 students receive job offers. In Nigeria alone, over 3,000 Nigerian students trained by Huawei have successfully passed the Huawei professional certification exams.
“Huawei hopes to skill up more than 700,000 ICT professionals by 2023. The aim is to bridge the ICT talent gap, advance the digital transformation of industries, and bring digital to every person, home and organization for a fully connected, intelligent world.”
