“Today we are announcing Huawei’s Seeds for the Future Program 2.0. As part of our commitment to continuously developing talent, we will invest US$150 million in this program over the next five years and help college students and young people improve their digital skills. This program is expected to benefit another 3 million people,”

said Huawei’s Chairman Liang Hua.

In 2008, Huawei started expanding its talent development programs through scholarships, technology competitions, and digital skills training. Since then, the company has invested more than US$150 million in these programs and benefited more than 1.54 million people across 150 countries.

Now the Seeds for the Future 2.0 program is one that has been revamped to further cultivate young talent across the world by providing them quality training facilitated by global ICT experts. The program will rely on the latest technology to help eligible youth to develop the skills and mindsets needed to be competitive in future workplaces.

In Africa, Huawei introduced the program in 2014 and has for the past years benefited nearly 2,000 students in 25 Sub-Saharan Africa countries attracting appreciation, support and recognisition from several African countries where it exists.

The South Africa Minister of Communications and Digital Technologies tella Ndabeni-Abrahams commended the partnership between her Ministry and Huawei for supporting South Africa’s National Digital and Future Skills Strategy through the annual Seeds for Future program that has benefitted many youth in the country.

“Through the Seeds for the Future Program, students will get access to Huawei’s latest technology and that will give them a valuable insight into how ICT works to change our lives. This is the 5G, cloud and AI era, and we want our students to get the best skills so they can innovate and create local solutions that will serve our local needs,” Stella said.

Stella Ndabeni – Minister of Communications and Digital, South Africa

In agreement, Yang Chen, the Vice President of Huawei Southern Africa said the company is committed to Africa’s human resource development. With the budding need for professionals across the world, Africa remains a stable ground for highly skilled youth to innovate the world’s next solutions as he said.

“Africa has the youngest population in the world. These youth are the continent’s greatest resource which will power the economy in the future. Huawei partners with African governments, education institutes and industry to equip the future leaders with the latest knowledge at the very highest global levels and provide them opportunities to apply it to achieve a better future for the continent.”

For the next 5 years, Huawei has committed resources worth $150 million under the Seeds for Future program 2.0 to facilitate skill development and expansion of its programs to thousands of beneficiaries across the world with major focus on sub-saharan Africa.

From a pool of 40 African teams that participated in the hard to win Sub-Saharan African round. The quad combination of Tanzania, Uganda, Nigeria, and South African students topped the competition by showcasing skills in Cloud, Routing and Switching, 5G, AI, and VR setups.

With a joint pool of over 50,000 students from 14 Sub-Saharan African countries that participated in the 2019/2020 competition. This year’s round has further marked an all time high of attendance since the Genesis of skilling African ICT talent based on Huawei’s certification path.

According to Huawei’s Global Vice President Mr. Hou Tao, the impressive enthusiasm showcased by students is a good signal for Africa’s digital inclusion rate in an era where physical workplaces are becoming a yesterday norm with online formations taking shape.

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 ICT talent pool, strengthening capacity building and increasing people’s digital competence.

Said Hou Tao

Annually, the Huawei ICT Competition encompasses the latest technologies such as cloud computing, AI, mobile networks, Big data, and IOT to test student levels in not just job market skills, but also their standards in the Innovation ecosystem.

In South Africa, the Minister for higher education Dr. Blade Nzimande inked the country’s goal of repositioning from just being a consumer of knowledge, but also able to leverage acquired skillsets to become a producer of knowledge and cutting edge innovations in partnership with brands like Huawei.

Notably, Dr. Blade Nzimande also urged the need for Pan African collaborations in order to stay competitive with the globalized nature of economies and digital transformation as a key driver.

In light of increased ICT Education centers, Huawei has for the past 5 years embarked on collaborating with over 250 Sub-Saharan Univerisituies through mutual agreements to enable students access top class ICT training.

Through this, over 7,000 University students have so far certified in Huawei’s various learning paths with Routing and Switching as the most popular.

In Uganda, the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of ICT and National Guidance, Vicent Waiswa Bagiire noted that ICT can bring substantial spikes in productivity to address some of the country’s urgent needs.

Furthermore, the development of Human capital is relevant to the ICT ecosystem, and so, with companies like Huawei in the pipeline of skilling more talent, the ICT Industry is able to grow stronger with vast training and ready competition.

The 2019/2020 Huawei Sub-Saharan ICT Competition Winning Teams

Uganda

Tanzania

Team 1

Team 2

South Africa

Nigeria

Team 1

Team 2

Team 3

Kenya

Team 1

Team 2

Lesotho

Mauritius

Zambia

From November 6 to 8, the 13 Sub-Saharan African teams will attend an online Global Finale which features excelling students from other continents. online.

With more than 300 Global Final entrants, the winning African teams will be able to demonstrate their talent and innovation levels in support of their origin countries and continent.

Over 37 vetted ICT Students from several Ugandan universities participated in the virtually held 2020 Seeds for the Future program.

Unlike previous rounds since 2016, participants leveraged e-learning tools with training in 5G, Internet of Things (IoT), Virtual Reality (VR), Big Data, Cloud computing, and Artificial Intelligence (AI).

In light of the current COVID19 Pandemic, Huawei took-on a new approach to run the 2020 round of the Seeds for the Future program. Given the fact that the program is run at Universities, Taking it Virtual became inevitable due to the Pandemic effects on education.

According to the Huawei Uganda Managing Director Mr. Gaofie, globally, the company fully turned the 2020 edition of the program into an online study. But just like previous rounds, competitors still get prizes as Tokens of appreciation on top of a global chance for a trip to China.

“ During this program, we have made full use of the benefits of; learning and communication without borders, showing the future communication trends through welink, a sense of exclusivity of a teaching form, and the convenience of not being restricted by the place among others”, Gaofei Said.

The Top 4 Excelling students each received Huawei devices with the first podium position holder Kasiita Patrick from Gulu University winning a Huawei MateBook on top of other prizes.

The 2020 Seeds for Future Program Winners

• Kasiita Patrick – Gulu University
•  

As a next challenge to conquer, the top 4 winning students will further test their skillsets on global and regional grounds for the ultimate chance for an all-expenses-paid technological trip to China.

While bracing the Winners, the State Minister of Educations and Sports, Hon. Hamson Obua commended Huawei for ‘walking the talk’ in skilling the next generation of ICT experts in Uganda.

“We want to salute Huawei that they are walking the talk. I feel honored to associate myself with this program that trains Ugandan students to become ICT experts. We are proud of the training opportunities you’re according to the citizens of Uganda. We are not taking that for granted,”

said Hon. Hamson Obua.

Given the fact that Huawei is one of China’s best brands, the Commercial Counsellor Ms. Zhao Xiufen inked the country’s dedication to support local ICT talent through providing the necessary infrastructure as she said.

“China has been providing connectivity infrastructure and it has been working with Uganda to enhance technology. Without such infrastructure, such flexible online training may have been impossible. It also worth noting that the Chinese people believe in sharing and that is why Huawei came up with seeds for the future program to give back to the world.”

In conclusion, the Program’s best student Kasiita Patrick marked Huawei’s Seeds for Future program an eye-opener for his career. Furthermore, he tipped fellow Students with Gulu University as his benchmark academy to enhance the attained skills from the program and build on them for a better future in the ICT ecosystem.  

But this has grown to change with vast Women participation in the Technology ecosystem and bullish curves showing their mass Involvement in Innovation-driven startups and enrollment for ICT education.

Well, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in 2011 marked every last Thursday of April as a day dedicated to celebrating girls in ICT worldwide.

Over 9,000 celebrations attracted 300,000 women participants by 2018, and today we celebrate the Women that have a broad passion for Technology and continue growing while excelling in ICT.

In Uganda, the rate of Women owning Internet-enabled devices like Smartphones and Personal Computers (PCs) has risen by 40% since 2015 as per social media analytic results. This is attributed to the dropping device prices, Internet prices, and to a greater extent access to quality ICT education and Innovation competitions.

Among these, the Huawei Seeds for future competition is an annual skills competition that enrolls students from various universities in Uganda for a chance to win an all expenses paid trip to China.

It’s through the competition that Cleopatra Ajambo changed her life from just a Computer Science Student to an IT network architect working with Huawei Uganda.

“As a Computer Science Student, you were expected to dig deep into programming as a major which was not, and is not most girls passion, so I found myself relying more on get good grades than building a career as a problem solver. But during my internship with Dfcu Bank, I was mentored into the networking field by my supervisor and that’s when I realized how best I could enrich my career with ICT Skills.”

According to Cleopatra, her goal for joining the seeds for future competition was to travel to China as the leading country in ICT equipment and services provision.

Amidst stiff competition, Cleopatra qualified for the national round after drafting a project proposal on how ICT can be leveraged to help people with chronic diseases remotely get access to doctors by using their smartphones.

“I wrote a proposal addressing people having chronic diseases and through the use of gadgets and networks, their health would be actively monitored remotely by the doctors. My proposal won because I was confident that if implemented it would help save lives and would receive a vote from the panel of judges.”

Luckily, Cleopatra’s proposal won, and her dream to visit China became a reality opening up her doors to a brighter career in the ICT Industry. On return, she was offered an Internship opportunity at Huawei Uganda to further enhance her career.

Due to her growing passion for ICT, she progressed through various ranks to her current position as a Maintenance Manager.

“ I joined Huawei as an intern without any network skills, but going through a number of trainings and documentation reading , I moved from being an intern of survey, to an IP engineer configuring devices such as cameras, switches, routers, firewall, to a maintenance manager where I coordinate the fiber team, networks team, and the systems team “

In the light of the Huawei Seeds for the future academy at Makerere University that opened doors for Cleopatra to join the annual skills competition, and enrich her career path.

Increased ICT education in Uganda has attracted Women to enhance their skills, and win positions that were previously known to be dominated by Men.

“ Being in a field mostly dominated by men, is what motivates us to always be outstanding. I am very competitive while at work, I am personally interested in computer networking, Routing & switching, certified in HCIA (Huawei Associate) and currently pursuing HCIP (Huawei computer internetworking professional). “ Cleopatra concluded

Among the successful women in Uganda leveraging ICT to lead and solve real-life problems in previously men dominated positions include the recently appointed UCC Executive Director Ms. Irene Sewakambo Kaggwa, the Minister of ICT and National Guidance Ms. Judith Nabakooba, among others.

As Women continue to rise in the ICT Industry, the role of ICT companies like Huawei, MTN, Airtel, among others, and Government support to nurture girls through quality ICT education and skill competitions respectively, will bring a fair balance in an industry that was once known to be fully dominated by men.