KU students triumph in global ICT competition

Students from Kenyatta University contested against 21 teams from across the globe to emerge victorious in the sixth edition of the Huawei ICT competition.

The KU team secured first prize in the innovation track category alongside students from China, Malaysia and the United Kingdom.

It was recognised for leveraging new technology such as the Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Huawei cloud computing to address challenges facing the country.

The students earlier in the year competed on the national stage where they won and proceeded to the regional stage, before finally getting a chance to compete internationally.

This year’s Huawei ICT Competition attracted 150,000 students from more than 2,000 universities in 85 countries and regions.

Despite the coronavirus pandemic, it was the highest number recorded in the history of the contest.

More than 15,000 of the participants were from 50 Sub-Sahara universities. The competition in Shenzhen, China, ended on June 25.

ICT talent exchange programme

“Huawei ICT Competition is an ICT talent exchange programme developed for university, college and TVET students. It aims to promote the healthy development of the ICT talent ecosystem and support the integration of industry and education,” said Huawei Enterprise’s president of global partner development and sales Xiao Haijun.

The contest is in three categories – Practice, Innovation and Industry.

Practice includes the network and cloud tracks which examine students’ theoretical knowledge and hands-on ICT skills as well as their ability to work in a team.

The network track involves use of datacom, security and wireless LAN technology while cloud track consists of AI, big data, cloud computing and storage. The innovation category, which KU students were recognised, involves the use of AI, IoT, big data and cloud to resolve real-life problems.

The industry category recognised students who leveraged on ICT to help industries solve the challenges they face in their day-to-day operations.

Cloud Track

Seven teams from Japan, China, Nigeria and Egypt won the grand prize for the Network Track of the Practice Competition, four teams from Algeria, Malaysia, Brazil and China took home the grand prize for the Cloud Track of the Practice Competition, while three teams from China and Iraq emerged top in the Innovation category.

The grand prize for the Industry Competition was taken by a team from Southeast University.

“ICT has become indispensable to our work and lives. The ICT competition is designed to help build an ecosystem that students can use to bridge the digital divide and accelerate digital transformation by improving their ICT knowledge, skills and innovation capabilities,” Xiao Haijun said.

He added that participants this year were also the first to compete for a new series of Women In Tech Awards.

A TECH4ALL Digital Inclusion Award was also presented to promote inclusive scientific and technological progress, industry development and sustainable socio-economic development.

Lack of synergy between universities and industry has impeded the adoption of new technology to make work more efficient. 

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