25 Kenyan students under the Huawei Seeds for Future program have completed a one-week immersion program into digital technology skills. This was during an ICT study tour in Shanghai, China, which coincided with the MWC Shanghai 2024.
The program admits students from various countries in Sub-Saharan Africa and equips them with digital skills to innovate and create technological solutions for their communities. As part of the tour, the students worked on a group project dubbed Tech4Good aimed at levering on technology to address current social and environmental issues.
Sylvia Jebet of Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT) emerged second place during the 2024 Leadership Employability Advancement Possibility (LEAP) Summit. This is out of over 50 students from various Sub-Saharan Africa countries that participated, with four participants from Kenya.
Jebet was feted for her outstanding performance in Digital Content creation content that featured various sites during the tour. This is including Huawei Watt Exhibition Hall, a visit to the DJI R&D centre in Shenzhen, a tour of the Huawei Songshan Lake visit, among others.
At the Shanghai MWC 2024, Huawei announced a new plan to train an additional 150,000 talents in Sub-Saharan Africa over the next three years. The plan comes on top of the Company’s initial goal to equip over 100,000 people in the region with digital skills by 2025. Huawei has already exceeded its initial goal by 120%, 10 months ahead of schedule, training over 120,000 individuals over the past 26 months. Both announcements were made at the LEAP Summit 2024; ICT Talent and Sustainable Development for Sub-Saharan Africa.
In Sub-Saharan Africa, Huawei has trained over 18,000 people from Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Namibia, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Nigeria, Ghana, and other African countries. Under the LEAP framework, Huawei trains its partners in the digital power and cloud ecosystem, hosts training and incubations for teachers and also hosts job fairs.
Speaking at the event, Hover Gao, President of Huawei Sub-Saharan Africa said, “We have made much positive progress in talent development across African countries, but this would not have been possible without the joint efforts of government agencies, academia, and industry.”