Huawei Middle East ICT Competition winners head to regional finals

The national winners of Huawei’s 2021 Middle East ICT Competition, which was recently held in ten countries across the region, have been announced. The yearly competition, now in its fifth year, aims to develop and empower the next generation of local ICT talent so that they may effectively contribute to the region’s national digitization objectives and technology-driven policies.

Steven Yi, President of Huawei Middle East, said: “The Middle East is home to some of the most creative young talents who are looking to advance their skills and showcase their innovation capabilities on the global level, especially in the technology field, which has become a vital driver of development in societies. We have seen sustained improvement in the quality of entries over the past five years of the Huawei Middle East ICT Competition, thanks to the support provided by the public sector.

“We continue to host the Huawei Middle East ICT Competition because we see the long-term benefit and impact of nurturing talent in the region. Talent development needs openness and collaborative efforts to keep pace with the rapid digital transformation trends across the region, and the Huawei ICT Competition is one of the ways we can show our ongoing commitment to support nations’ development visions using technology,” he added.

Huawei teamed up with different public sector partners, such as ministries of education, telecom regulators, and youth empowerment authorities, to organize the tournament in local markets this year, with about 15,000 entries from 453 local colleges and institutions in the Middle East. The winning national teams from each country will now compete in a Middle East regional competition—the program’s final leg—for a chance to win USD20,000 in prize money, various awards and certificates, and the chance to play in the global finals. Three pupils plus an academic tutor make up each squad.

This year, the highly successful Huawei Innovation Competition, which ran concurrently with the ICT Competition, returned. The Huawei Innovation Competition encourages undergraduate students and professors to leverage cutting-edge technologies like 5G, AI, cloud computing, and big data to develop useful and impactful applications for society.

The Huawei ICT Competition began in 2017 and has since grown to become one of Huawei’s most prestigious competitions. Last year, the company worked with over 20 ministries and 442 institutions, and over 15,000 students took part in the tournament. Last year, the inaugural “Innovation Track” was launched to help students expand their skills and give a platform for implementing specialized capabilities and applications in the Middle East.

The Huawei Middle East ICT Competition is one of Huawei’s many CSR activities to develop talent among Middle Eastern youngsters. Thousands of young people in the region benefit from an advanced skills development pipeline every year, thanks to the Huawei ICT Academy, the Huawei Innovation Competition, the Seeds for the Future program, joint university labs, and other initiatives, which equip them with the necessary skills to lead digital transformation and development efforts within their country.