By Our Reporter
Three University students representing Uganda; Shaffic Nyanzi and Emmanuel Kiguli from Muni and Doreen Nalwoga from Lira University emerged among the world’s best at the Huawei ICT Competition Global finals, taking first position. This was the first time for Uganda to qualify for the global stage after taking first position at the Africa region final.
The Huawei ICT Competition is an annual international competition, a communication platform for university students and higher education institutions within the Huawei ICT Academy program. Through this competition, Huawei aims to challenge the students ICT knowledge as well as the practical and application skills, and ultimately, inspire innovation with the theme of “connection, glory, future”.
Uganda and other 12 teams qualified for the global competition to battle other countries from Asia, Latin America, East Europe and the Middle East. Despite being the newest contestants of Huawei 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, from Lira University and among the winners of the first position shared her experience with Huawei and the competition. “This journey with Huawei came with benefits such as professional certification in the fields of interest,” she said. “Huawei gave us 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.”
The three Ugandan students’ achievement is due to Huawei Uganda’s continued recognition and efforts to build a competitive ICT talent pool among the young generation, who will be an indispensable accelerator for the Uganda’s post-COVID recovery and digitization.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, all the training and competition activities were completed online. The victorious students had a good reason to rejoice after over 10 months of hard work and fierce competition all the way from national screening contests, the regional final, and the global final.
Over the past five years on the African region, Huawei has signed cooperation agreements with over 250 universities in 14 Sub-Saharan countries on establishing Huawei ICT academies. This cooperation has enabled more than 7,000 university students to obtain Huawei ICT certification, which makes them better candidates for ICT-related jobs. In Uganda, eight universities have signed which include, Makerere, Muni, MUBS, Soroti, Kabale, Kyambogo, Nkozi and Mbarara.
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 already shifting online. “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.
This year’s Huawei ICT Competition attracted nearly 150,000 students from over 2,000 universities in over 82 countries. 327 students from 39 countries participated in the online global final, making the scale the largest in all years. Teams from Zambia, Lesotho, and South Africa also reached the global final.
