The competition attracted over 15,000 participants from Sub-Saharan Africa from 500 universities. Globally the Huawei ICT Competition 2021 covered over 80 countries worldwide, with 150 000 contestants from more than 2,000 universities and colleges.
Launched in the African region just six years ago, the Huawei ICT Competition has developed into the largest ICT skills competition in Africa and the world atlarge.
Teamm Uganda was represented by Makerere University which took 12 students and Muni University which took three students out of the 750 students that registered in 2021.
Three students from Makerere took first position and then the other six from Makerere and Muni took second position respectively. These shall now proceed to the global finals in China to compete at global level in May this year.
According to the Huawei Uganda Public Relations Director, Mr Gaojian, “Huawei Uganda approached over 15 universities and interested them in the 2021 ICT Competition. We registered 750 students and opened for them our free online learning platforms in the various courses of Network and cloud. The network track consists of Datacom, Security and Wireless Lan while Cloud track consists of Artificial intelligence, Big Data, Cloud Computing and Storage. These studied and were subjected to preliminary exams, national exams and Regional exams where we attained the first and second position.”
Michelle Chemutai, a telecom engineer, at Makerere University and one of the winners expressed her gratitude to the exposure Huawei had accorded to them.
“The competition was very intimidating and at the same time exciting. The thought of competing with creme de la creme teams from different countries was frightening. Taking the first position made me really feel good about myself and increased my self-confidence. Thanks to Huawei,” she said.
She added that, “This competition was a new experience for me as an individual. it taught me team work and coordination and that hard work actually pays off. This competition literally forced us to give in our best. Also, I got a lot of exposure in the network field and learnt how to do the practical lab configurations that isn’t taught at the university.”
With a series of talent ecosystem campaigns in Sub Saharan Africa, including the ICT competition, Huawei hopes to skill up more than 700,000 ICT professionals by 2023.
