12 Nigerian students reach Huawei’s global ICT competition finals

Philip Clement, Abuja

A total of 12 Nigerian students will be representing the country at the final of the 2020 global ICT competition.

The competition which is sponsored by ICT giants, Huawei have students from the University of Ibadan, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, and University of Port Harcourt on the final list following their sterling performance in the Cloud and network examination at the just concluded 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 regarded as the biggest of its kind in Africa featuring 123 student-talents from 13 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa.

At the Sub-Saharan regional finals, the students compete 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.

Daily Times reports that the Huawei ICT competition which is 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.

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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.

Mr. Weilei, one of the Huawei Channel Training Managers (for ICT Talent Ecosystem Development in Nigeria), says “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

“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,”

Also, Ms Melissa Chen, Director, Huawei Nigeria Enterprise D&S Department added that “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,”

According to her, “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.”

In the same vein, Mustapha Abdullahi Jimoh, a cloud team student from Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria said

“I feel very excited to be participating in the Huawei ICT Global Finals. It took a lot of time and effort to come this far and I am glad our team’s perseverance yielded great results. Huawei provided us with a suitable learning environment during our 6 weeks internship where we learnt about the emerging technologies such as Cloud and Storage.”