Nigeria’s Stellar Performance at Huawei ICT Competition

Nigerian students that participated in the Huawei ICT Competition 2024-2025 Global Final, made the country proud by clinching two grand prizes and winning in the first prize category, writes Emma Okonji who was in Shenzhen, China to cover the global ICT competition

The closing and awards ceremony of the Huawei ICT Competition 2024–2025 Global Final, which was held on Saturday May 24, 2025 in Shenzhen, China, was a huge success, which clearly defines how Huawei is digitally transforming education and ICT talent development across the globe.

The global ICT competition, which is in its 9th edition, reached a record-breaking scale this year, attracting over 210,000 students and instructors from more than 2,000 colleges and universities in over 100 countries and regions, Nigeria inclusive.

Following national and regional competitions, 179 teams from 48 countries and regions made it to the global final, which held from Tuesday May 20 to Friday May 23, before the awards ceremony on Saturday May 24, 2025.

The Huawei ICT Competition is an annual global event designed for students and teachers from colleges and universities. It offers 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. In China, it has been listed as a national competition for university students, while globally, it has been recognised as a key partner flagship programme by UNESCO’s Global Skills Academy.

Grand Prize Awards

Through intense competition across three major tracks: Practice, Innovation, and Programming, top honors were awarded to 18 outstanding teams from nine countries: China, Nigeria, Algeria, Brazil, Philippines, Morocco, Serbia, Tanzania, and Singapore.

The Grand Prize winners of the Innovation Competition were teams from the Bulacan State University in the Philippines; Beijing University of Technology in China; 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. 

In the Practice Competition – Network Track, Grand Prizes were awarded to teams from the Shenzhen Institute of Information Technology in China; Instituto Federal do Tocantins in Brazil; Federal University of Technology Minna in Nigeria, and a joint team from Dar es Salaam Institute of Technology, University of Dar es Salaam, and University of Dodoma in Tanzania. 

In the Practice Competition – Cloud Track, Grand Prize winners included 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.

In the Practice Competition – Computing Track, the Grand Prizes went to 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.

The Grand Prize in the Programming Competition was awarded to a team from Shenzhen Polytechnic University in China.

Special Awards

To recognise outstanding contributions beyond technical excellence, the competition also presented special awards to outstanding teams. The special awards include: Women in Technology Award, Green Development Award and Most Valuable Instructor Award. The Women in Tech Award was granted to four all-female teams from Brazil, Saudi Arabia, Germany, and Kenya. The Green Development Award went to a team from the University of Ghana. The Most Valuable Instructor Award recognised 18 distinguished instructors from 10 countries – China, Nigeria, Algeria, Bangladesh, Brazil, Egypt, Indonesia, Iraq, Hungary, and Türkiye, for their contributions to ICT education.

Huawei Global ICT Competition

In his opening speech, at the Huawei ICT Competition 2024–2025 Global Final Closing and Awards Ceremony, the Director, ICT Strategy and Business Development Dept at Huawei, Ritchie Peng, said: “To achieve the goal of learning through competition and inspiring innovation through competition, we have continuously evolved the design of competition topics. The Practice Competition aligns with our vision for an Intelligent World 2030 and encourages students to master cloud computing, big data, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to drive social progress. The Innovation Competition focuses on green development and digital inclusion, motivating participants to solve real-world challenges in sectors like agriculture, healthcare, and education through ICT.”

As digital transformation is accelerating globally, the demand for skilled professionals in fields such as AI, big data, and cybersecurity continues to grow. However, the shortage of talent in these critical areas is becoming increasingly evident. To help tackle this challenge, the Huawei ICT Competition features multiple tracks — including Practice, Innovation, and Programming — alongside initiatives such as industry-academia collaboration and tailored curriculum development. These efforts aim to equip students with in-demand skills and foster the next-generation tech talent who will stand out in an increasingly intelligent and digital world.

During this year’s competition, Huawei also hosted the AI Accelerating Education Transformation Summit, where experts explored the pivotal role of AI in smart education. In addition, Huawei officially announced the AI Capability of the Huawei ICT Academy Intelligent Platform, making it easier and more efficient for educators and students to use. This marks another step forward in advancing educational digitalisation.

The Nigerian Contingent

Nigerian students from various universities across the country, participated in this year’s Huawei Global ICT Competition, and some of the teams made it to the final stage of the competition. Two groups of Nigerian students from the Federal University of Technology, Minna won two grand prizes in the competition.

The two teams participated in the final contest in the Computing and Network technology tracks, and won the grand prize, alongside other teams from different universities of the world. Aside winning the grand prize, other Nigerian teams, from the University of Ibadan and Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, also won first prize in the global competition. While the team from the University of Ibadan won in the Cloud technology contest, the team from Ahmadu Bello University, won in the AI Innovation contest. In all, 36 teams from various universities, won in the first prize category, which included teams from various universities from China, Nigeria, Algeria, Cameroon, Kenya, Malaysia, Brazil, Egypt, Poland, Madagascar, Vietnam, and Jordan. For the second prize category, 54 teams won, which include universities from Uganda, Ghana, Kenya, among others, while some universities were also named for the third prize category.

The winners were presented with trophies and medals among other items.       

Victor Olamide Akande from the Federal University of Technology, Minna, who spoke with THISDAY Newspaper about their victory in winning the grand prize in the competition, said: “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.

Tersoo Ushana Ezekiel and Manuwa Bala, members of the Network team from Federal University of Technology, Minna, that also won grand prize in the global ICT competition, told THISADY that it was a keenly contested competition, followed by months of preparation. They said they were happy to make Nigeria proud in the global ICT competition.

One of the instructors from Huawei Academy, Mr. Knimi Bakna Musa, who was part of the instructors that mentored the students from Federal University of Technology, Minna, said he was happy to see his students win in the grand prize of the global ICT competition.

“Winning at that highest level, is actually an achievement and this is really something remarkable. As instructors, we have done our best to guide the students and the students did extremely well to win the grand prize category in the global contest,” Musa said.

Huawei Exhibition Centre

In order to give participating students an all-round experience, Huawei organised a tour to the Huawei exhibition centre, its research institute, the IoT Research Centre at Shenzhen University Polytechnic, and the Dongguan Education Bureau.

Inside the Huawei exhibition centre, there were displays of latest technologies, including the Accelerating B2B Techco Evolution, that brings digital to everyone, home and organisations for a fully connected, intelligent world.

The centre has an AI -Centric Network that enables business success in the digital era. At the centre, there was digital display of how people could use AI as personal assistant to order ride and dinner, thus making daily life flexible and easy in the future. Also on display at the centre, was how to use AI and 5.5G to convert long text into video for faster compression. 5G base stations for remote areas access, to complement fibre-to-the-home, was also displayed at the Huawei exhibition centre. Huawei has come with a new initiative where small and medium businesses can use the 5.5G technology to control robots that could to give customer direction and assistance in super markets and stores. 

At the IoT Research Centre at Shenzhen University Polytechnic, the Huawei ICT Academy is in collaboration with Shenzhen Polytechnic University to train talents in digital technology. 

The IoT centre supports talent development in technology skills, and Huawei ICT Academy offers certification programme at the centre.

Over 250,000 students have been trained by Huawei, since the partnership was signed in 2006, and over 400 students have been certified in the highest Huawei’s certification. Huawei offers opportunities for employment for certified students.

In the Huawei ICT Academy, students are trained in 5G technologydeployment, from the digital training lab that is designed for 3G, 4G and 5G technologies.  

The university is a vocational institution located in Shenzhen, and it is in partnership with Huawei in the area of digital training.

The school is of the view that the Huawei technology model can be replicated anywhere in the world.

While addressing the audience during the tour, the Dean, School of Electronics and Information Engineering, Shenzhen Polytechnic University, China, Prof. Song Rong, said: “The Huawei Global ICT Competition is a good initiative that will further enhance technology development in schools. The University is in the process of establishing computing capacity to further drive technology and enhance AI, as we plan to use AI in teaching and learning.”

Rong advised African universities to develop partnership with Huawei Local ICT Academy, adding that such initiative will help introduce exchange programmes in schools and also boost digital transformation. 

In order to address the language barrier that could impede such partnership between Huawei ICT Academy and African Universities, Rong said the training   

Curriculum, which is designed and developed in Chinese language, could be translated to English language for African countries that study in English language, adding that AI will be applied to translate languages from Chinse language to English language. 

Dongguan Education Bureau

During the tour to Dongguan Education Bureau in China, Deputy Directors at the Information Centre, Dongguan Education Bureau, China, Cheng Qinglei, and Du Runjiang, addressed the tour group. According to them, the Bureau is in partnership with Huawei Technology to develop information technology and information systems for schools in Dongguan. 

They said through the partnership, all schools in Dongguan have been fully connected to be able to access digital teaching and learning.

Giving further details, they said in Dongguan, teachers were sent to the western areas, usually the remote areas to teach the local teachers how to make the best use of all the IT platforms, adding that since the partnership with Huwaei, schools in the area have recorded many high-quality courses.
“So we provide an account for the teachers in these remote areas, which they can use to log into the platform. In addition, our teachers will also give them some guidance that will enable them to make better use of the platform,” Runjiang said.
“Back in 2019, we signed the strategic cooperation framework to build a digital government, where we need to use the latest technologies to improve efficiency and also make our work processes more transparent So the Dongguan government needed to choose a company that has the strength and the technology capability, and Huawei Technology was chosen as the technology partner. .

“So in the field of smart education, I think Huawei is a good fit, because it has accumulated a lot of technology skills and systems over the years, and these technologies can be readily applied to education,” Qinglei said.

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