Last year in October, Huawei organised the second edition of the Huawei Global ICT Competition under the theme ‘Connection, Glory, Future’ which aims to provide a platform for global ICT talents to showcase their ability, compete and communicate, encouraging ICT-related study and drive the growth of a robust ICT talent ecosystem.
The competition saw over 2500 students from Makerere University, Kyambogo University, Mbarara University of Science and Technology (MUST), Uganda Martyrs University (UMU) Nkozi, Kabale University, Lira University, Gulu University, Muni, UCU, and MUBS registering to participate and out of those, 100 excelled to the national final exam.
All participants accessed learning material free of charge on the Huawei online learning platform in the various courses such as Network and Cloud track. The network track consists of Router & Switch, Security and Wireless LAN while Cloud track consists of Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, Cloud Computing and Storage.
Of those that sat for the national exam, three best students have been selected on merit to represent Uganda in the global and final competition in South Africa, and they are all from Makerere University.
Students doing the National Final exam at Huawei Offices
These are Magola Kenneth, Okello Stephen and Mudulo Gerald. They are expected to travel to South Africa on March 22, 2020 to participate in the regional final with other African countries and later in May to China, Shenzhen in the global final amongst the rest of the world.
Liao Shuangquan, the Huawei Uganda Human Resource Director noted that the competition is very relevant to every ICT student and professional because it is a comprehensive approach of skills development for employment, enhanced productivity and growth.
“Training contents in this program have been aligned with skills requirements in the job market. That is why we re-dedicate ourselves to working even more closely with universities across the country to better equip students with the next generation of technologies and create the platform for the Ugandan students to demonstrate they are capable of maturing into world-class experts,” said Liao.
The second edition of this skilling competition began in October 2019 with several roadshows in the earlier mentioned universities and also a boot camp training to prepare the competition participants to do the exams.
Liao added that the top 11 students among the 100 national finalists shall be awarded in a ceremony to happen in March, with Huawei Professional certificates, Huawei gift devices and job/internship opportunities at Huawei.
Through the continued initiative to bridge the ICT skills gap and fostering ICT talent pool needed for national social economic development, Huawei Uganda has been working with government and academic partners since May 2019 to open up its academies in the various universities of Uganda.
So far, six academies have been opened in Makerere University, MUBS, Soroti University, Muni, UMU Nkozi, MUST, and Kabale University.