Six students to fly Kenya flag at global ICT skills competition

Li Xuhang, Charge d’Affaires, Embassy of the People’s Republic of China in Kenya (L) awarding one of the winners

NAIROBI, KENYA: Huawei Kenya has awarded 11 top students who emerged as national winners of the 2018 Global ICT Skills Competition.

Six of the winners from Jomo Kenyatta University of Technology, Meru University, University of Nairobi and Zetech University are slated to attend the competition’s regional round to be held in South Africa at end month.

If they succeed, they will head to China on a fully sponsored trip for the global finals that will involve candidates from over 50 countries.

The competition, launched in July this year, saw more than 4,000 IT students register at the preliminary stages from 40 universities across the country. Of these, 600 were selected for training after a competitive selection process after which the top 100 then underwent further coaching at a boot camp session before sitting for the nationwide exams.

Speaking at the award ceremony, Mr. Li Xuhang, Charge d’Affaires, Embassy of the People’s Republic of China in Kenya praised Kenyan students for participating in the contest to enhance and grow their ICT skills.

He urged Kenyan ICT students to leverage on ICT to create miracles just like what Huawei and Alibaba have achieved in China and across the globe.  “To empower the youth is to empower the whole nation and that explains what Huawei is celebrating tonight, to build human capacities. I encourage all the young students to grasp opportunities presented by innovative technologies such as ICT to nurture home grown global companies in Kenya. I also wish that they become ambassadors of friendly relations between Kenya and China, as the two countries are set to mark their 55th anniversary of diplomatic ties in December this year,” he said.

Speaking at the ceremony, Alfred Cheruiyot, Principal Secretary at the Ministry of Education congratulated the students on their achievement and challenged them to fly the Kenyan flag high at the Regionals in Cape Town. “We are proud of these young people, who beat thousands of other applicants, and believe they will do great and represent us at the global stage in China”.

Huawei Kenya and a number of the company’s partners such as Redington, Sybl Limited, Next Technologies, Smoothtel, Express Auto, Computech and Atlancis have offered internships to the excellent achievers of the competition.

The 2018 ICT Competition has been launched in more than 10 sub-Saharan Africa countries, including South Africa, Nigeria Kenya and Zambia. Under the slogan of “Connection, Glory, Future,” this event has attracted more than 20,000 participants. This figure has increased dramatically from 1,000 in 2017.