Huawei Partners With African Universities To Train 1M New ICT Professionals

Huawei Technologies in collaboration with universities across Africa has set an ambitious goal of training nearly 1 million new ICT professionals. The partnership aims to increase academia collaboration and the need to advance the digital transformation of local industries.

Under the theme of “Connection, Glory, Future”, Huawei has invited bright university students from 70 countries and pursuing courses in Information and Communication Technologies to test their talents through an intense assessment.

The students will be tasked with designing and building innovative solutions on Huawei technological platforms, including the Cloud to address areas such as environmental protection and close societal gaps with digital skills.

Besides the traditional Network and Cloud Track, it includes an Innovation Track that will for the first time stretch the students’ creativity.

With a target of 700,000 skilled professionals trained by the year 2023, the firm is using its annual ICT assessment to examine the students for their ICT knowledge, practical skills and innovation acumen.

The program also serves as a platform for talent placement, with 350 students having succeeded in getting jobs over the last 5 years.

The need for IT talent in Africa continues to be a headache for companies looking for professionals in the field. So much is the problem that it has led to talent poaching among players in the industry.

However, experts agree that Africa will continue to experience a shortage of technology workers if they do not change their education systems to adapt to the demand. There is also the need for talent nurturing to ensure more young people pursue IT and related courses.