Huawei’s ICT Competition Registrations Reaches Record High of 6,400 Students from Kenya—100 Students to Compete for Prizes at National Final Tomorrow

[Nairobi, Kenya, Nov. 25, 2019] Huawei announced today that its annual ICT Competition has had a record 6,400 applications from more than 60 Universities across Kenya. As part of the competition, Huawei offers all participants access to free courses and learning materials. The top100 students have been trained during the boot camp at the University of Nairobi and Zetech University in HCIA (Huawei Certified Internet Associate) certifications in Routing and Switching, Security and Cloud in the process of preparing to compete in the 4-hour national final lab exam on Wednesday for tech prizes and a trip to South Africa for the regional final.

Students registering for the ICT Competition at a campus event at Strathmore University

This is the fifth Huawei ICT competition, including both a Network Track and a Cloud Track and has attracted more than 100,000 students from over 1,600 colleges and universities in 61 countries. Through Huawei’s ICT Competition, Huawei aims to provide students with a platform to compete and exchange ideas in order to enhance their ICT knowledge, practical and application skills. The competition is also a platform that facilitates connections between international talents as the winners of the Kenyan national competition will go on next year to the regional final in South Africa and then possibly to the global final in China, as the winning Kenyan team from 2018 did after coming second in the regional final.

Ma Yue, vice president of Huawei Enterprise BG, President of Huawei EBG Global Sales, President of Huawei EBG Partners & Alliances, gave a speech at the closing ceremony of the 2018 competition explaining that: "The talent ecosystem is the foundation of our strategy. In this ecosystem, talent is the most important factor that ensures the vitality and continuous growth of the industry. Over the past 30 years, we have made many efforts to train ICT talent by sharing our knowledge and best practices. We team up with educational institutions, industry associations, and partners to build a platform to foster ICT talent. This allows us to make the most of our experience in ICT by investing in talent to cope with future challenges and uncertainties. Today we aspire to build global standards for the development and certification of ICT talent."

Along with the ICT Competition, Huawei has agreements with 28 Universities and Training Institutes in Kenya as ICT Academies—the latest being Garissa University who joined this month—whereby Huawei trains lecturers on the latest curriculum and certifies them to train students. Huawei also organizes career fairs for students—in 2018 more than 40 students obtained internships at Huawei or Huawei’s partners—and donated equipment to Academic partners.

As well as the ICT Competition and ICT Academy Program, Huawei has multiple other programs to support ICT Skills in Kenya, such as Huawei’s Seeds for the Future program which has provided internships for 121 students and training for 57 students in China in recent years; a graduate training program that takes 20 students each year; and supporting the Presidential Digital Talent Program by taking interns and training over 400 students each year.