A trio of Ugandan IT Students have excelled with a podium position at the 2020 Huawei ICT Global Skills competition. The annual competition grades ICT student skills from several countries across the world through regional rounds, and a final global round to sieve top-class students of the year.
Shafiq Nyanzi, Emmanuel Kiguli from Muni University, and Doreen Nalwoga from Lira University shined among the world’s best at the 2020 round of the ICT Competition held virtually with participation from over 39countries with 103student teams.
This year, Huawei Uganda reached out to over 10 universities and registered over 2500 students to take part in the 2020 round of the competition with a country level grading system to level teams for the regional African round.
At regional level, over 3 Ugandan teams and 12 African teams qualified for the global round of the competition. At a global level, the teams faced stiff competition with participants from Asia, Latin America, East Europe, and the Middle East.
Despite being the newest contestants at the Global level of Huawei’s ICT Competition since 2017, African students have made stunning progress this year. In 2019, only five African teams made it to the global final and reaped only one-third prize, compared with 13 teams this year, winning a total of seven medals.
Doreen Nalwoga, a student of Lira University and one of a member of the winning team representing Uganda shared her experience of the competition from country level to regional level and finally winning at the Global round.
“This journey with Huawei came with benefits such as professional certification in the fields of interest, Huawei gave students the opportunity to learn skills which are recognized in the world of ICT. Huawei provided us with a platform to experience and practice on new, innovative, and cutting-edge technology to grow and develop ourselves.”
Doreen Nalwoga
In light of the current COVID-19 pandemic, all training and competition activities were held online. Victorious students had a good reason to rejoice after 10 months of hard work and fierce competition from national screening contests, the regional final, to the global finals.
Historically, the past five years have attracted Huawei to sign co-operation agreements with over 250 universities in 14 Sub-Saharan countries to establish Huawei ICT academies and nurture rising ICT talent.
The cooperation has enabled more than 7,000 university students obtain Huawei ICT certifications making them better candidates for ICT-related jobs. In Uganda, 8 universities so far host the Huawei ICT academy including: Makerere, Muni, MUBS, Soroti, Kabale, Kyambogo, Nkozi, and Mbarara Universities.
Mr. Hou Tao, Global Vice President of Huawei, highlighted the impressive enthusiasm of the students, which is much needed to for Africa’s digital inclusion in the era when the gravity of workplace skills is shifting to office-less standards as he said.
“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 a competitive ICT talent pool, strengthening capacity building and increasing people’s digital competence,” said Mr. Hou.
In a nutshell, Huawei’s ICT Competition has continued to upskill students across Uganda by availing open certification paths and academies at local universities.
On a global scale, this year’s Huawei ICT Competition has attracted nearly 150,000 students from 2,000 universities in 82 countries. In Africa, teams from Uganda, Zambia, Kenya, Lesotho, and South Africa also made it to the global round.