The second edition of the Huawei global ICT competition is officially on in Uganda, having kicked off with a road show in Makerere University. The 2019-2020 Global ICT competition under the theme “Connection, Glory, Future” aims to provide a platform for students to express their tech skills.
Held on a global scale, students to showcase their ICT abilities, through competition and communicate, while engaging in ICT-related study. A total of 6000 students from the various Universities all over Uganda are expected to participate in the contest.
Some of the subjects that the students engage in include networking, Cloud Computing, artificial intelligence and big data.
How to register for the Huawei ICT competition
As of today, the company has signed up six universities across Uganda in launch establishment of academies, where students can access to industrially-recognized certification courses.
The first round of registration will take place from 26th August to 30th October at Makerere, Kyambogo, Muni, MUST, Lira, Gulu, Busitema among other private Universities respectively. The registered students through http://bit.ly/2yjbWEv are expected to access learning material and certification portfolio provided by Huawei free of charge.
Winners of the contests in Uganda will have opportunity to participate in the regional finals in South Africa and global finals at Huawei’s headquarters in Shenzhen, China.
Closing the ICT skills gap in Uganda
According to Mr. Liujiawei, the Managing Director of Huawei Uganda, the ICT skills gap in Uganda has “increasingly become a bottleneck for embracing opportunities in the digital era”.
He emphasizes the need to foster an open and sustainable ICT talents ecosystem that involves different stakeholders to equip youths with employable skills and increase competencies relevant in the labor market.
“We need a comprehensive approach of skills development for employment, enhanced productivity and growth. Training contents must be aligned with skills requirements in the job market. That is why we re-dedicate ourselves to working even more closely with universities across the country to better equip students with the next generation of technologies and create the platform for the Ugandan students to demonstrate they are capable of maturing into world-class experts.”
In Uganda, the ICT skills gap is also a challenge. A report by National Information Technology Authority shows that within MDAs, ICT personnel account for only 1.9% of the total work force.
Huawei Uganda is closely working with government, industrial and academic partners in upskilling engineers, providing certification courses, sponsoring aboard studies and supporting government’s initiatives in promoting innovation and ICT learning.
