Chronicle Editor
Sikhulekelani Moyo, [email protected]
GLOBAL telecommunications giant, Huawei Zimbabwe, has partnered with five local national universities in an initiative meant to close the skills gap in the information communication technology (ICT) sector.
The company is working with students from the National University of Science and Technology (Nust) and the University of Zimbabwe, among other universities in related faculties, providing mentorship and on-the-job training, among other initiatives.
Huawei introduced an ICT Academy, an online platform that provides free courses to ICT faculty students from the partnered universities.
Yesterday, Huawei Zimbabwe executives participated in a career expo held at Nust and outlined their programme and intended outcomes.
Huawei public relations manager, Mr Moses Musanhu, said digitisation has created growth in demand for ICT skills hence the need for more partnerships to bridge the gap.
He said the partnership with universities was a way to try and match the digital transformation with more than 170 countries introducing their digital strategies and over 50 releasing their artificial intelligence (AI) strategies.
“ICT talent is an urgent need. So, we at Huawei believe in supporting ICT talent development and that is why we have come up with the ICT Academy,” said Mr Musanhu.
“We are talking about the need for that talent development to meet the requirements of each country and its development strategies, quantity and path being specified,” he added.
“Because of that support, we want to focus on universities and enterprises within particular nations, which is why at Nust we also focus on making sure that our ICT Academy and all of our ICT talent cultivation activities are also done at this university.
He said the company also wants to build a prosperous industry ecosystem where it is saying in the future, 70 percent of the ICT will be in urgent need in sectors like big data, cloud, IOT and intelligence, especially in HarmonyOS and Euler where there is a projection that there will be a shortage on the mentioned subject matters in the future.
Experts in the ICT sector continue to urge players to embrace inclusive digital transformation as a critical pillar towards the attainment of Vision 2030 goals.
The country is on a trajectory to attain an upper middle-income economy by 2030 with the Government continuing to review and formulate policies that accelerate domestic development in line with the changing technological advancements.
Mr Musanhu said enterprises have been increasing the demand for digital transformation, which has resulted in the growing need for ICT talent.
He said the Huawei ICT Academy is in more than 2 000 nations with more than 11 000 being instructors training more than 200 000 students per year.
In Zimbabwe, he said more than 5 000 students have benefitted from the ICT skills development with about 1 000 undergoing training.
The Academy also provides training for instructors who work at different universities.
“We develop academies to promote university-enterprise collaboration for ICT talent cultivation and the university, which is registered with Huawei ICT Academy can provide certification,” said Mr Musanhu.
“Once you register, lecturers are not excluded in terms of training, they go through the instructor classes where they learn how to deliver these Huawei focused certifications,” he added.
Huawei also offers the ICT competition where students from partner universities can join to showcase their innovative solutions nationally, regionally and globally.
The students will not only win prizes for their innovations but will benefit from exposure and broadening of horizons in the sector.
The global telecoms firm also recruits students from partnered universities for internship, graduate trainees and actual employment after university.
Some of the beneficiaries of the Huawei initiatives gave their testimonies saying that they learnt a lot of skills as they are now working with experts from Huawei in
China and India, doing hands-on in different projects.
“At 24 years, I am graduating with a first-class Degree in the Bachelor of Engineering Honours in Telecommunications.
“My journey began with dreams inspiration and a bit of uncertainty,” said Miss Vision Munorweyi from Nust. — @SikhulekelaniM1
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