Huawei hands out devices, internships to annual ICT competition winners

ICT PS Jerome Ochieng, Huawei Kenya deputy CEO Daniel Young and Minister Counselor of Chinese Embassy Zhao Xiyuan
  with this year’s Huawei ICT Competition winners. [Courtesy]

Eighteen students will be trained by Huawei Technologies and partner companies under an internship programme, the technology firm has announced.

The beneficiaries who were selected during this year’s National Final of the Huawei ICT Competition will be posted at Huawei Kenya, Sybyl, BCK, China Mobile International, China Telecom Kenya, Smoothtel and Data Solutions, Cloud Productivity Solutions, Opticom and Percap among others.

Also awarded by the tech firm were 20 top students from various local universities.

Maluki Mathusi of University of Nairobi and Kabarak University’s Ngetich Kimaiyo received Huawei Matebook Pros after emerging the 2019-2020 ICT competition winners.

Multimedia University took Best ICT Academy Award, with JKUAT, Laikipia University and Strathmore producing other winning students.

The top three students from each Track will have the opportunity to proceed to the Regional Final in South Africa in February 2020 to represent Kenya and compete with teams from eight other African countries.

Speaking during the award ceremony, Huawei Kenya deputy CEO acknowledged the hard work of the students.

 “Over 6,000 of you applied, 100 of you got to the final, and just a few of you have made it this far as winners. It has taken you a lot of hard work to get this far and this is important. In our experience, if you work hard and invest in education then you can achieve your goals in life,” he said.

 “Huawei has been here for over 20 years already, investing in this country and its people; we are here for you and will always be here for you, to help you further your skills and join the ICT industry in this country or even globally; to help you use your skills and our technologies to transform Kenya.”

While handing out the prizes for the students, ICT Principal Secretary Jerome Ochieng thanked Huawei for their initiative.

“Skills development is a critical element in a digital economy, hence the partnership with Huawei in Innovation and training on ICTs. Congratulations to all the winners,” he said.

The 2019-2020 Huawei ICT Competition was announced in June 2019 and saw over 6,400 students from 40 universities in Kenya register to take part.

The competition gave students the option to compete in either a Network Track or a Cloud Track based on their career interests with Network Track featuring Security, Networking and WLAN while Cloud Track featured newer technologies such as Cloud Service, Big Data and AI.

Due to Huawei’s leading technology, strong position in the Kenya market, and significant presence on campus through multiple skills programmes, a record number of students registered.

Bootcamp

They were given access to the latest training materials through an online learning platform with e-learning videos and mock practice questions to learn as they prepared to sit for the Preliminary round of the competition from where only the top 100 students would proceed to the National Final Round.

From November 11 to 15, 100 top students selected from the Preliminary round were invited for a bootcamp training in Cloud and Networking at University of Nairobi and Zetech University respectively.

The bootcamp provided students with more hands on training from Huawei Certified Academy Instructors.

These top students also received Huawei Certification Vouchers to sit for Huawei Certified ICT Associate (HCIA) Certification in Networking, Security and Cloud Service. The students sat for the National Final on November 27 in a four-hour Lab Exam that featured Network configuration on a simulated network environment and configuration and deployment of cloud services on Huawei Cloud Platform.

The Huawei ICT Skills Competition was started in 2015 by Huawei and has grown to be one of the largest and highly anticipated ICT Skills Competitions globally.

In 2018, the competition attracted over 100,000 students from 600 universities globally.

Huawei has strengthened its partnership with Universities and Colleges globally to grow ICT Talents and provide relevant ICT Skills to students through its global not-for profit initiative, Huawei ICT Academy.

In Kenya, Huawei has partnered with 30 Universities and Colleges since 2017. These institutions are now authorised to provide Huawei industry standard Certification training in Networking, Cloud Computing and AI.