Six countries have completed the country-level Huawei Information Communication Technology Competition and will compete in the Sub-Saharan African finals, which is scheduled to kick off in February 2022.
On the theme: “Connection, Glory, Future”, the Huawei ICT Competition is sailing through its 6th year in Sub-Saharan Africa, with 15,000 students from 500 top universities and colleges in 17 countries.
A statement issued in Accra by Huawei said over the past five years, the competition had attracted over 80,000 passionate ICT students, with 21 teams entering the global finals.
It said the 2019-2020 competition marked a historic milestone for Sub-Saharan Africa with two teams from Nigeria winning the Grand Prize of both the Network Track and Cloud Track, while three teams from Kenya, Uganda, and Mauritius were joint first prize winners.
The statement said globally the Huawei ICT Competition 2021-2022 had covered over 70 countries with a total of over 130 teams competing.
“The global finals are expected to happen in May of 2022,” it added.
The statement said to encourage broader participation, the 2021-2022 competition would still be virtual.
Besides the traditional Network and Cloud Track, the competition would also officially introduce an innovation track.
It said the contestants would design innovative solutions targeting general well-being, such as environment protection and closing social gaps, by utilising Huawei technologies including Huawei Cloud.
It said last year, the Mazingira Team, from Kenya took part in the invitational competition and presented a solution called Wildfire PrediTec, to detect, analyse, predict, and prevent wildfires, designed on Huawei internet of things and Artificial Intelligence platforms.
“The Huawei ICT Competition also opens bigger opportunities to participants. As of today, the competition-related training helped over 350 students receive job offers,” it said
With a series of talent development campaigns in Sub Saharan Africa, including the ICT competition, Huawei expressed the hope to skill up more than 700,000 ICT professionals by 2023.
The aim is to bridge the ICT talent gap, increase academia-industry communication, and advance the digital transformation of industries.
