By Our Reporter
Five universities will be representing Uganda at the Africa regional finals of the Huawei ICT Competition 2022/2023 in Johannesburg, South Africa. The universities include; Gulu, Kabale, Makerere, Kyambogo which will represent Uganda in Network Track whereas Muni will represent the country in Cloud track.
“In total Uganda shall take 5 teams of threes to represent us in cloud and network track. The network track consists of Datacom, Security and Wireless Lan while Cloud track consists of Artificial intelligence, Big Data, Cloud Computing and Storage,” Huawei Technologies Uganda management said.
The regional finals will be happening in South Africa in March, 2023 and here two exams will be conducted (written and Lab). The ranking and awarding will be done by the Africa Regional offices. The successful teams will then head to China for the global final in May, 2023.
This year’s competition kicked off with registration of participants in July/September, 2022 with over 4500 students from 25 Ugandan universities registering to take part. It was followed by a preliminary in October/November, 2022. Thereafter, a national final was conducted where over 1,200 students from 19 universities qualified and the finalists were then selected after the national final exam.
“Following the exam, Kabale, Gulu, Kyambogo and Makerere Universities emerged winners for the network track and Muni came out the best in Cloud track. Each university will take three students for the Regional level.”
The students who will represent Uganda include: Ssozi Malik, Mutesi Carol Wera, Namuddu Maria Christine (all from Gulu University); Viola Ritah Wakooli, Sharon Ajaa, Ambrose Okullo (all from Kabale University); Magoola Kenneth, Okello Stephen, Christopher Ivan Katoogo (all from Makerere University); Tadeo Mushemeza, Nsereko Hamza, Ekirapa Emmanuel (all from Kyambogo); and Daniel Kirigwajjo, Amusolo Patience Patricia and Tumwijukye Elly (all from Muni University).
The annual Huawei ICT Competition is a key piece of the ICT Academy Campaign. It targets university and college students worldwide, aiming to facilitate communication between schools, enterprises, and governments while building a robust talent ecosystem. 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”.
After seven years of development, The Huawei ICT Competition has become one of the biggest technology events of its kind in Africa. The competition covers latest technologies such as cloud computing, AI, mobile networks, big data, that are pertinent to students’ competitiveness in the job market.