Huawei’s P1.5m ICT charm to UB

In its endeavour to provide world class Information and Communication Technology (ICT) services in Africa and across entire world at large, Huawei is setting up a Telecommunications Outdoor Training Facility at cost of over P1.5 million at the University of Botswana (UB).

The pronouncement on the meaningful investment was made known by Meng Qingbao, Vice President of Enterprise Business at Huawei Group for Southern Africa recently in Gaborone.

Speaking as a guest of honour at the UB Foundation Gala Dinner, Qingbao said the Chinese giant telecommunication company views UB to be crucial centre in disrupting ICT.

He said the main purpose of the Huawei ICT academy housed at UB is to provide amongst others, training and industry certification for students in computer networking and computer clouding.

“The ICT facility shall give the UB undergraduates more access to latest 2G/3G\4G, power and transmission technologies during the tenure as students and help improve their technical installation and configuration competency before entering the outside job market,” Qingbao revealed.

Huawei chief further averred that his company is working with five universities in Botswana, saying they shall have the full authorisation to offer Huawei courses for the students.

He added that such courses to be offered will enable the students to obtain certification of the new technologies in areas of networks, date centres, cloud service and Big Data just to mention few.

Qingbao went on to single some of the ICT initiatives that Huawei has put in place aimed at upgrading university students with ICT background, noting the Huawei ICT skills competition.

The Huawei ICT Skill Competition, he said, is a global competition that provides opportunities for the university to participate, emphasizing that it is helpful in driving the fourth industrial revolution.

The 2019 competition registration has seen 800 Batswana students registering so far in the platform. He is hopeful that they will achieve good results at the end.

Moreover, Huawei Authorised Information and Network Academy (HAINA) forms part of global ICT programme built to provide universities training solutions that meet requirements of industry.

UB Vice Chancellor, Professor David Norris lauded Huawei for its commitment in augmenting the university’s work of producing high class competitive students in areas of engineering.

Professor Norris also underscored that the mandate of university is to provide excellence in the delivery of learning to ensure society is provided with cream of talented and creative graduates.

He said the graduates possessing such traits will be phenomenal in advancing the knowledge and understanding through excellence in research, hence efforts for UB to be more research intensive institution.