Nigeria Shines at Huawei ICT Competition

Emma Okonji, who was in Shenzhen, China to cover the global ICT competition, says that Nigerian students who competed in the Huawei ICT Competition 2024-2025 Global Final made the nation proud by winning two grand prizes and first prize.

On Saturday, May 24, 2025, in Shenzhen, China, the Huawei ICT Competition 2024–2025 Global Final concluded with an awards ceremony that was a great success. This demonstrates how Huawei is revolutionizing ICT talent development and education globally.

In its ninth edition, the international ICT competition attracted more than 210,000 students and faculty from more than 2,000 colleges and universities across more than 100 nations and regions, including Nigeria, setting a new record. 

From national and regional competitions, 179 teams from 48 nations and regions made it to the final stage, which ran from Tuesday May 20 to Friday May 23, before the awards presentation on Saturday May 24, 2025.

China has listed the Huawei ICT Competition as a national university student competition, and UNESCO’s Global Skills Academy has recognized it as a key partner flagship program. The Huawei ICT Competition is an annual global event for college and university students and teachers. It provides an international platform for competition and exchange, enabling participants to strengthen their ICT knowledge, improve practical skills, and foster innovation using the latest technologies and platforms. Since its launch in 2015, the competition has been gaining significant momentum, with more countries and students joining each year.

The Grand Prize Recognition through fierce competition across three key tracks: Practice, Innovation, and Programming, top prizes were presented to 18 outstanding teams from nine countries: China, Nigeria, Algeria, Brazil, Philippines, Morocco, Serbia, Tanzania, and Singapore.

Teams from Bulacan State University in the Philippines, Beijing University of Technology in China, the Faculty of Technical Sciences Čačak of the University of Kragujevac in Serbia, and the Faculty of Sciences and Technics of Errachidia – Moulay Ismail University in Morocco were the Innovation Competition’s Grand Prize winners. 

Teams from the Shenzhen Institute of Information Technology in China, the Instituto Federal do Tocantins in Brazil, the Federal University of Technology Minna in Nigeria, and a combined team from the Dar es Salaam Institute of Technology, University of Dar es Salaam, and University of Dodoma in Tanzania were given Grand Prizes in the Practice Competition – Network Track.

Teams from iACADEMY in the Philippines, University of Batna 2 and the Higher National School of Computer Science Algiers in Algeria, Tianjin University of Technology and Education in China, and Singapore University of Social Sciences were among the Grand Prize winners in the Practice Competition – Cloud Track.

Teams from Guilin University of Electronic Technology in China, Federal University of Technology Minna in Nigeria, University of Bejaia and Higher National School of Computer Science SBA in Algeria, and Cebu Institute of Technology – University in the Philippines won the grand prizes in the Practice Competition – Computing Track.

A Chinese team from Shenzhen Polytechnic University won the Grand Prize in the Programming Competition.

Particular Honors from the tournament also gave exceptional teams extra awards to recognize their accomplishments beyond technical proficiency. The Most Valuable Instructor Award, the Green Development Award, and the Women in Technology Award are among the unique honors. Four all-female teams from Brazil, Saudi Arabia, Germany, and Kenya were given the Women in Tech Award. A group from the University of Ghana won the Green Development Award. 18 eminent educators from ten nations—China, Nigeria, Algeria, Bangladesh, Brazil, Egypt, Indonesia, Iraq, Hungary, and Turkey—were honored with the Most Valuable Instructor Award for their contributions to ICT education.

At the Huawei International ICT Contest, Ritchie Peng, Director of Huawei’s ICT Strategy and Business Development Department, gave the opening remarks at the Huawei ICT Competition 2024–2025 Global Final Closing and Awards Ceremony. He stated: “We have continuously evolved the design of competition topics to achieve the goal of learning through competition and inspiring innovation through competition.” In line with our goal of an Intelligent World by 2030, the Practice Competition challenges students to become experts in big data, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence (AI) in order to advance society. The Innovation Competition encourages competitors to apply ICT to address real-world problems in industries like agriculture, healthcare, and education. Its focus is on digital inclusion and green development.

The need for qualified professionals in fields like artificial intelligence (AI), big data, and cybersecurity is growing as the world’s digital transformation accelerates, but there is a lack of talent in these crucial areas. To address this issue, the Huawei ICT Competition offers several tracks, including Practice, Innovation, and Programming, in addition to programs like industry-academia collaboration and customized curriculum development. These efforts are meant to give students the skills they need to succeed in an increasingly intelligent and digital world.

Huawei also hosted the AI Accelerating Education Transformation Summit during this year’s competition, where professionals discussed the critical role AI plays in smart education. Furthermore, Huawei formally unveiled the Huawei ICT Academy Intelligent Platform’s AI Capability, which makes it simpler and more effective for teachers and students to use. This marks another step forward in advancing educational digitalisation.

The Nigerian Contingent who are students from various universities around the country participated in this year’s Huawei Global ICT tournament, and some of the teams made it to the final stage of the tournament. The tournament awarded two grand awards to two groups of Nigerian students from the Federal University of Technology, Minna.

Along with other teams from around the world, the two teams competed in the final contest in the Computing and Network technology tracks and won the grand prize. In addition to winning the grand prize, other Nigerian teams from the University of Ibadan and Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, also took first place in the global competition. The University of Ibadan’s team won the Cloud technology contest, while Ahmadu Bello University’s team won the AI Innovation contest. The 36 teams from different universities, including teams from China, Nigeria, Algeria, Cameroon, Kenya, Malaysia, Brazil, Egypt, Poland, Madagascar, Vietnam, and Jordan, won in the first prize category. Universities from Ghana, Kenya, Uganda, and other countries were among the 54 teams that won in the second prize category. A few universities were also selected for the third prize category.

Among other things, trophies and medals were given to the winners.

Speaking to THISDAY Newspaper about their success in winning the competition’s grand prize, Victor Olamide Akande of the Federal University of Technology, Minna, stated: “My team competed in the Computing track, and by God’s grace, we got the grand prize. It was an amazing experience for the team to go this far to clinch the grand prize, and I want to thank my team for the collaboration and also our instructors that nurtured us all through the preparation period and the competition period.”

Members of the Federal University of Technology, Minna’s Network team, Tersoo Ushana Ezekiel and Manuwa Bala, who also took home the grand prize in the worldwide ICT competition, told THISADY that the tournament was fiercely competitive and required months of preparation. They said they were glad to make Nigeria proud in the global ICT battle.

Mr. Knimi Bakna Musa, one of the Huawei Academy instructors who served as a mentor to the Federal University of Technology, Minna students, expressed his happiness at his students’ victory in the global ICT competition’s grand prize.

“Achieving success at that level is truly an accomplishment, and this is truly something extraordinary.” We have tried our best as teachers to help the pupils, and they performed incredibly well to take home the grand prize category in the international competition,” Musa stated.

At the Huawei Exhibition Centre, Huawei arranged a tour to the Dongguan Education Bureau, the IoT Research Center at Shenzhen University Polytechnic, the Huawei exhibition center, and its research institute to provide participating students with a comprehensive experience.

The Accelerating B2B Techco Evolution, which provides digital to everyone, homes, and organizations for a fully connected, intelligent world, was one of the newest innovations on show within the Huawei exposition center.

The center’s AI-Centric Network makes it possible for businesses to succeed in the digital age. A digital display at the center showed how AI may be used as a personal assistant to order meals and a ride, making daily living more flexible and convenient in the future. The center also demonstrated how to employ 5.5G and AI to compress lengthy text faster by turning it into video. In addition to fiber-to-the-home, 5G base stations allowing access to remote locations were also on display at the Huawei exposition center. Huawei has launched a new program that allows small and medium-sized businesses to employ 5.5G technology to manage robots that might help and guide customers in stores and supermarkets.

In order to teach talent in digital technology, Shenzhen Polytechnic University and the Huawei ICT Academy collaborate at the IoT Research Centre.

The Huawei ICT Academy provides a certification program at the IoT center, which fosters the development of technological talent.

Since the relationship was established in 2006, Huawei has trained more than 250,000 students, and more than 400 of them have earned the highest Huawei certification. Huawei provides qualified students with employment options.

Using a digital training lab built for 3G, 4G, and 5G technologies, students at the Huawei ICT Academy receive instruction in 5G technology deployment.

Located in Shenzhen, the university is a vocational school that collaborates with Huawei on digital training.

The school believes that anywhere in the globe, the Huawei technological model may be duplicated.

“The Huawei Global ICT Competition is a good initiative that will further enhance technology development in schools,” stated Prof. Song Rong, dean of the School of Electronics and Information Engineering at Shenzhen Polytechnic University in China, as he spoke to the audience during the tour. Since we intend to apply AI in teaching and learning, the university is now building up its computing power to advance technology and improve AI. 

Rong suggested that African colleges build a cooperation with Huawei Local ICT Academy, noting that this would facilitate the introduction of school exchange programs and accelerate digital transformation.

Rong stated that in order to overcome the language barrier that would prevent such a collaboration between African universities and Huawei ICT Academy, the training

For African nations where English is the primary language of instruction, curricula created and produced in Chinese could be translated into English. AI will also be used to convert languages from Chinese to English. 

Cheng Qinglei and Du Runjiang, the Deputy Directors of the Information Center of the Dongguan Education Bureau in China, spoke to the tour group when they were in the country. They claim that the Bureau is working with Huawei Technology to create information systems and technology for Dongguan schools.

They claimed that all of Dongguan’s schools are now fully connected and have access to digital teaching and learning thanks to the agreement.

They added that since the partnership with Huwaei, schools in the area have recorded many high-quality courses. They also explained that teachers were deployed to the western areas, mainly the remote ones, in Dongguan to train the local teachers how to make the greatest use of all the IT platforms.

Therefore, we give teachers in these isolated places an account that they may use to access the platform. Furthermore, our instructors will provide them with some direction that will help them utilize the platform more effectively,” Runjiang stated.

“We signed the strategic cooperation framework in 2019 to create a digital government, where we must use the newest technologies to increase productivity and transparency in our work processes.” Huawei Technology was selected as the technology partner because the Dongguan government wanted to pick a business with the strength and technological capacity.

According to Qinglei, Huawei is a strong fit in the field of smart education since it has amassed a wealth of technological systems and abilities over the years, many of which can be easily implemented in the classroom.