Huawei Uganda has awarded the 2021 Seeds for the Future finalists, as well as the ICT competitors at both the National and continental levels. This was during an event held at the Uganda Institute of Information and Communications Technology, Nakawa; dubbed the Huawei Uganda ICT Competition Awards.
The ceremony was graced by a number of dignitaries. These included the Vice President, H.E Jessica Alupo, and H.E Zhang Lizhong, the Chinese Ambassador to Uganda. Both congratulated Huawei Uganda upon organizing the event and also applauded students for taking part in the various competitions.
H.E Alupo also officially flagged off the winning teams to the Huawei Global Competitions happening soon.
Mr. Gao Fei, the MD Huawei Technologies Uganda, thanked in his opening speech the Chinese Ambassador to Uganda for his continued support in giving knowledge and support to the Academy. He also highlighted the innovations that the company is working on.
“We’ve empowered a number of Ugandans with ICT skills. It is now its time to move forward as we stir on to showcase the talents through a formidable job fare coming up soon,” he said.
He added that so far, different students have been sent to China to study 5G/ Cloud computing, AI, Cyber security, among others.
The winners
Some of the winners of the 2021 Huawei Seeds for the Future from the Tech4Good project are Winnie Tuni from MUBS, Samson Ogwang from KIU, and Male Moses from KIU.
The 2021/2022 Huawei Sub Saharan ICT Competition (Innovation team) was won by Rutanana Arnold, Nakyanzi Catherine, and Nsegiyumwa Wilberforce; all students from Makerere University. (pictured below)
The trio will be launching an app that will test HIV/AIDS & Malaria instantly.
The Seeds for the Future program
The Seeds for the Future program started in Uganda in 2016 and has been ongoing since then. Every year, the top 10 university students in ICT-related courses are selected for a study trip in China; save for when it went online during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Over 30,000 students have benefited directly from this program globally since its inception.
In 2021, Huawei stated its plans to invest US$150 million in digital talent development over the next five years. This program is expected to benefit another 3 million youth.
