Five universities to represent Uganda at Huawei Africa Regional Finals in South Africa

At least five universities will be representing Uganda at the Africa regional finals of the Huawei ICT Competition 2022/2023 in Johannesburg South Africa.

The Universities include; Gulu, Kabale, Makerere, Kyambogo which will represent Uganda in Network Track whereas Muni will represent the country in Cloud track.

“In total Uganda shall take 5 teams of threes to represent us in cloud and network track. The network track consists of Datacom, Security and Wireless Lan while Cloud track consists of Artificial intelligence, Big Data, Cloud Computing and Storage,” Huawei Technologies Uganda management said.

The regional finals will be happening in South Africa in March, 2023 and here two exams will be conducted (written and Lab). The ranking and awarding will be done by the Africa Regional offices.  The successful teams will then be promoted and head to China for the global final in May, 2023.

This year’s competition kicked off with registration of participants in July/September, 2022. And it’s worth noting that over 4500 students from 25 universities of Uganda registered to take part. It was followed by a preliminary in October/November, 2022. Then a few weeks ago, a national final was conducted where over 1,200 students from 19 universities qualified.

According to Huawei Uganda management, the participants were taught extensively and on 15th to 18th November they did the national final exam.

“Following the exam, Kabale, Gulu, Kyambogo and Makerere Universities emerged winners for the network track and Muni came out the best in Cloud track. Each university will take three students for the Regional level.”

The students who will represent Uganda include; Ssozi Malik, Mutesi Carol Wera,  Namuddu Maria Christine (all from Gulu University), Viola Ritah Wakooli, Sharon Ajaa, Ambrose Okullo (all from Kabale University), Magoola Kenneth, Okello Stephen, Christopher Ivan Katoogo (all from Makerere University), then TADEO Mushemeza, Nsereko Hamza, Ekirapa Emmanuel  from Kyambogo and then Daniel Kirigwajjo,  Amusolo Patience Patricia and Tumwijukye Elly (all from Muni University).

The annual Huawei ICT Competition is a key piece of the ICT Academy Campaign. 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”.

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.

Over the years on the African region, Huawei has signed cooperation agreements with over 250 universities in 14 Sub-Saharan countries on establishing Huawei ICT academies.

This cooperation has enabled more than 7,000 university students to obtain Huawei ICT certification, which makes them better candidates for ICT-related jobs.In Uganda, over 18 universities have signed which include, Makerere, Muni, MUBS, Soroti, Kabale, Kyambogo, Nkozi, Mbarara, KIU and IUIU among others.