A team of young ICT Mozambican students are participating on the regional ICT competition taking place from 08 to 11 March 2019 in South Africa.

 The competition on Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) called “Huawei ICT Competition Southern Africa 2018-2019” was launched in August 2018 and was aimed to students in ICT fields from higher education institutions from the second year onwards.

More than 250 students from universities from Maputo and Beira cities were enrolled, then submitted to a preliminary examination where 85 students were approved. Those approved were submitted to national phase examinations, where 18 students from five higher education institutions were approved, four from Maputo and one from of Beira.

It is from the 18 approved on the national phase competition that the top three was selected to defend the Mozambican flag colors at the regional phase in a close competition involving the best ICT students from 11 Southern Africa countries, namely Angola, Botswana, Ghana, Kenya, Mauritius, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Mozambique. The competition will end with the holding of the International Stage to be held in China, between the months of April and May 2019, and will be eligible to join the best team from this Regional Stage.

It is noteworthy that all 18 approved students of the national phase are entitled to receive a Huawei International Certification called “Certified ICT Associate: HCIA-Routing & Switching” in addition to other awards that include Huawei smart devices.

The impact of this initiative on the training of national technicians with international certification and with technical skills to manage the various network equipment purchased and installed by national entities that manage data communication networks, such as telecommunications operators, banks, data centres, including the National Government Data Center, public administration entities, and institutions of the academic and scientific community interconnected through MoRENet.

The initiative, which is the first of its kind in Mozambique, was promoted in a partnership between MoRENet (Mozambique Research and Education Network and Huawei Mozambique, a leading global provider of ICT infrastructures and smart device.

MoRENet through the Ministry of Science and Technology, Higher and Technical Vocational Education (MCTESTP) and Huawei Mozambique signed in August 2018 a Memorandum of Understanding that includes Huawei ICT training and knowledge transfer and ICT talents cultivation.