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By Annonciata Byukusenge
The ICT competition organized by Huawei this year 2022-2023 was attended by 146 groups from 36 countries and regions, the team from the University of Rwanda participated in this competition held in Shenzhen and won the second prize.
Rwanda through the University of Rwanda Network team has exceled at the 2023 Huawei ICT Competition global finals held in Shenzhen China by taking Second Prize. Being its first time in the competition has defeated over 30 countries and 130 teams to become second. (Kigali Rwanda 30th May 2023).
After nine (9) months of heavy preparation, Huawei’s global ICT Competition was successfully held on 23rd to 28th May, 2023. The event’s culmination was a competition between finalists in 146 teams from 36 countries. Before the Final, more than 120,000 students from more than 2000 universities in 74 countries and regions around the world took part in the ICT Competition.
The three students from University of Rwanda namely; Minani Regis, MUGIRANEZA Magnifique , Mugisha Michael Fred excelled among the 650 students from eight universities of Rwanda at the National finals stage and continued up to the Africa stage where they also took second prize and qualified for global competition stages in China.
Ambassador James Kimonyo, the Rwanda Ambassador to China graced the Huawei ICT global competition 2022-2023 awards ceremony on 27th May in Shenzhen China during which the three Rwandan Students were among the prize winners in network track. He noted that “I commend Huawei for this nobble initiative which is meant to inspire and equip young People with skills necessary for addressing development challenges”.
The Huawei ICT Competition is a competitive ICT talent exchange program developed globally for university, college and TVET students. This aims to promote the healthy development of the ICT talent ecosystem and support the integration of industry and education. Launched in the African region just six years ago, the competition has developed into the largest ICT skills competition in Africa and the world at large.
According to Mr Yangshengwan the country director of Huawei Rwanda, “I congratulate the Students from University of Rwanda. The annual Huawei ICT Competition is a key piece of the ICT Academy Campaign which we launched in 2021 through an MOU signed between us and the university. 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”.
Xiao Haijun, President of Global Partner Development and Sales Dept, Huawei Enterprise Business Group among many other Huawei delegates who attended the closing ceremony noted the importance of digital talents and skills as the foundation for the digital economy.
He said, “Digital talent and digital skills will be the foundation for the digital economy development. In the future, Huawei will bring ICT education resources to more schools around the world. We are projected to build 7000 Huawei ICT Academies in total by 2026, train more than 1 million students every year, greatly improving students’ digital literacy and skills for a more dynamic and inclusive digital world.
After seven years of development, The Huawei ICT Competition has become one of the biggest event 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.
This is the first time Rwanda is participating in this competition. It should be noted that over 650 students from eight Universities of Rwanda registered and participated in the earlier stage of the competition namely preliminary and national stage. These universities include: AUCA, INES, RP, UR, UOK, and ULK among others.
As a key project of Huawei’s Seeds for the Future 2.0 initiative, the Huawei ICT Competition aims to provide a platform for global college students to compete and communicate with each other in the ICT field. As of the end of 2022, Huawei has cooperated with 2200 universities to build Huawei ICT Academies, helping to train more than 200,000 students each year. Since its initial launch in 2015, more than 580,000 students from 85 countries and regions around the world have participated in the competition.
This is what the participants had to say:
Minani Regis a participant in the competition in the Network track shared his thought on the competition. ‘‘The early stages of the competition arrived finally, and we were called for the preliminary stage of the competition. It was not easy, but with great effort, I passed. New stage, new rules, and of course new things. The next stage we had to prepare for was the regional stage. This time things were different. We had to work in groups, and you guessed it right, new and advanced concepts were introduced to us. This time we had to learn to work collaboratively and with high speed and accuracy. It was no longer an individual competition; we were competing with countries. With great guidance and support from our instructor and everyone else involved. We prepared well until we sat for the regional competition.”
MUGIRANEZA Magnifique a fellow competitor from UR in the Network track added ‘‘HUAWEI ICT competition provided me a platform to showcase my technical skills and creativity in Networking. We witnessed real-world networking tools and devices, providing us with valuable learning experiences. HUAWEI ICT competitions also promote teamwork and collaboration and help to build soft skills such as communication, time management, and problem-solving. However, in the HUAWEI ICT competition we faced challenges of training for a short period of time and also as a newbie in competition we didn’t have the past participant to consult us and prepare us for competition. Despite the challenges, HUAWEI ICT competition is a rewarding experience that helped us develop valuable skills essential in today’s digital world. Prizes for winners are often available, which can be in the form of devices, cash, internships, and even job opportunities.’’
Mugisha Michael Fred also a student from UR who participated added “I participated in network track and the competition was amazing because I learned a lots of things that I didn’t know such as routing and switching, wireless networks and other amazing networks engineering knowledge and working in teams to perform a tasks when we have a problem sharing ideas was the first thing to solve a problems than working alone that was the best of the best they taught us team working as of the challenges I didn’t have much but there was this task we had to create a network from a scratch it was a bit challenging to accomplish but as the old man says nothing can be performed without challenges we as a team worked on it and accomplished the task as it never was.”
