Botho, Huawei Africa host ICT competition

MASERU – BOTHO University, in conjunction with Huawei Africa, on Tuesday held the Huawei African Regional Competition Awards that seek to improve students’ Information, Communication and Technology (ICT) skills.
The Dean and Head of Campus in Maseru, Dr Abhishek Ranjan, said the skills will equip the students to contribute meaningfully to Lesotho’s economic development.
He said their idea is to produce employable graduates adding the internships and entrepreneurship programme is meant to produce better graduates.
The Huawei Africa representative, Khanyisile Ndumo, said ICT talent is a key factor to ICT development and the digital economy.
She said technologies are changing the world so rapidly and “we see the fast development of technology such as cloud, big data, artificial intelligence and machine learning”.
Ndumo said countries and industries are constantly upgrading existing ICT networks and improving their digital strategy, but this development strategy could not be achieved without sufficient talent support.

She said they all know that the ICT talent and professionals development are the foundation and the core elements of ICT development and digital economy.
Ndumo said their vision as Huawei is to bring digital technology to every person, home and organisation for a fully connected, intelligent world.
She said in the past 30 years, they have sought to train ICT talent through the Huawei ICT Academy by sharing their knowledge and practices they have learned over the years.
“Today we aspire to build global standards for ICT talent development and certificates,” she said.
She said the first ICT competition was launched in 2015 and in 2018, the competition reached 11 countries across Southern Africa.
Ndumo said more than 30 000 students from more than 200 universities are participating in this competition in order to improve their ICT skills.

The Chief Executive Officer of Basotho Enterprise Development Corporation (BEDCO), ’Makatleho Matabooe, said Botho is going to take Lesotho to a better place.
She said people get scared when talking about ICT amid fears that jobs were going to be lost. She said ICT will enable them to penetrate the market especially through advertising.
Matabooe said she does not want to see Botho students being employees but they must create jobs.
She said Botho products should talk about modern entrepreneurship which is possible with ICT.
Matabooe said it is her wish to see Botho students owing ICT companies instead of such companies being owned by foreigners.
Regional finalist Seeiso Seetsa expressed his gratitude to Huawei management for coming up with this brilliant idea.
“It is through this competition that I acquired more skills in ICT,” he said.

Refiloe Mpobole