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Huawei Kenya has announced that it has trained over 240 university students from 13 universities in Kenya on 5G technology.

The company recently concluded a 6 day virtual training on 5G to over 240 university students from 13 Universities around the country. The universities include University of Nairobi (UON), Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT), Strathmore and Zetech University.

This initiative is part of broader efforts by the company to prepare the country to take advantage of this new transformative technology.

Many countries and economic blocks around the world have already launched 5G strategies and plans that have identified how important 5G will be to their economies in both creating jobs and creating economic output. They have found that 5G has the ability to rapidly roll-out high speed connectivity for homes, businesses, schools and hospitals. It also enables step-changes in industrial productivity in sectors such as manufacturing and transport. It creates opportunities for entirely new business models and services in industries such as tourism, entertainment, gaming and broadcasting.

This year has seen 5G rolled out in over 80 networks globally reaching 70 million subscribers already, twice as fast as 4G achieved. 5G is able to handle many more connections at much faster speeds, and more securely. As with most new technologies, there is a lot of excitement about its capabilities and how it can help with Kenya’s economic and social development once it gets rolled out here.

As a leader in 5G, Huawei identified a need to create a course to give students in Kenya the tools to understand and navigate this technology. The students conducted a 2 hour interactive course, 90 minutes of lectures and 30 minutes of Q&A each day with a different group. The course has greatly assisted the students in understanding 5G technology, from the perspective of technology, standards, regulation, policy, economy, society and environment.

The trainer for the course was Huawei global specialist Ding Yajie who was able to answer many of the student’s questions as well as ask them questions to test their understanding at the end of each session. Topics that Mr. Ding covered included 5G architecture, different deployment scenarios, application uses and challenges.

“The Huawei 5G Training was a really great course and presented by Ding Yajie in an enthusiastic way. The course helped to compound the knowledge I have about networking in general and in wireless technology. The videos used in the training really made it interesting and gave the training a better look and understanding, in that, for example, when talking about intelligent connected cars, it is one thing to just have some slides on the same but it’s on a whole new level having a video demonstrating how the same can be done and helps to kind of visualize the same.” Said Evans Kiprotich a 3rd year Bsc. Telecommunications and Engineering student at JKUAT.

The courses were conducted in two parts 5G Technology and Trends; and 5G Use Cases and Business Models.

“Training the group of University students from Kenya this week has been a pleasure, they have been thoroughly engaged and eager to delve deeply into the understanding of 5G ” Trainer Ding Yajie observed.