Winners of Huawei ICT competition S. Africa awarded in Johannesburg

JOHANNESBURG, March 10 (Xinhua) -- Winners of Huawei ICT Competition Southern Africa 2018-19 were awarded trophies in Johannesburg on Sunday. They will soon set off to China for the final global competition.

Yusuf Hamisi, 26, is a first-year information technology student from the Open University of Tanzania, who was part of the winning team.

"This is such a great opportunity, I didn't know that it would open so many doors for me," he told Xinhua, adding that this was important for them and for the continent at large.

About 28,000 students from universities and colleges across Sub-Saharan region took part in the competition, with teams from Nigeria and Tanzania clinching victories. Winners, together with teams from Kenya and Angola, in May will join with another 22 teams from across the world to compete for the global champion.

Huawei's Vice President Mark Xue told the students at the award ceremony that the ICT competition is a global platform for exchange of ideas and an important part of Huawei's talent development strategy.

"I am very pleased that we have enhanced mutual understanding through this journey for the development of your country and this promising continent," he said.

Wang Daoyu, first secretary of education at the Chinese embassy in South Africa, said that providing hundreds of African students with ICT skills is significant for the development and industrialization of the continent, and is essential for the industrialization and development of all developing countries.

The competition is also key for people-to-people exchanges, and it has brought so many together for the betterment of lives and people from Africa, said Wang.

Huawei is a global provider of information and communication technology (ICT). Its ICT competition, carried out at national, regional and global levels, has become one of the largest in the world and attracted 80,000 participators worldwide this year.