Huawei Technologies ‘Seed for the Future’ programme, an initiative that seeks to grant tertiary students offering courses in ICT the opportunity to get first hand practical experience in China, has benefitted about 50 students this year.
Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, the programme was executed successfully but instead of the selected students travelling to China, it was online based. It was therefore held in partnership with the Ministry of Education, UNESCO Ghana, National Council for Tertiary Education, University of Ghana, KNUST and Ghana Communications Technology University (GCTU).
Deputy Managing Director, Huawei Technology Ghana, Geoffrey Li, in his address at the closing ceremony for the 2020, Seed for the Future programme, indicated that dreams do not become reality by magic but through determination, hard work and training, as such Huawei is committed to skills development and training to give the youth opportunity to attain their aspirations.
“Huawei has been an organisation that believes in the youth and has provided opportunity to the youth especially the females. This year, 45 percent of the participants are females and this shows that ladies can do well in ICT just like men when given the opportunity,” he said.
He further congratulated all the graduating students and encouraged them to keep up with their respective courses in ICT, especially those who won various prizes as outstanding student at the end of the two weeks training.
Speaking on behalf of the graduating students, the student representative, Joshua Eyram Wordey, expressed his profound gratitude to Huawei on behalf of the class and thanked all facilitators from the various universities for the intensive practical training afforded them over the two-week period.
On the awards session, Randel Daketse, University of Ghana; Jeremiah Amlanu, KNUST; Anafo Suzana, UDS; and Esther Abankwa, KNUST were adjudged with outstanding performances in the group work stage, walking away with Huawei Y9-Prime each.
For the overall Best Performance Students Awards category, Abudu Bayorwor, Wa Polytechnic placed fifth, Shona Dery, University of Ghana came fourth and Emelia Boadi-Misa, GCTU came in third. The final two awards were split up into male and female with Samuel Amankwah of KNUST grabbing the Overall Best Male student whilst Dalia Anakwah of GCTU grabbed the Overall Best Female Student Award. The awards came with a cash prize, Huawei Y9-Priime mobile phone, shopping vouchers, among others.
Ghana Ambassador to China, Edward Boateng, congratulated the students especially the winners of the awards and in particularly the women for putting in such tremendous efforts. He added that Seed for the Future is an important programme and he is grateful to Huawei for adding Ghana to the list of countries to benefit.
“Technology is very important and even more important for us in Africa because of our challenging needs. During the outbreak of COVID-19, it took technology to make it easy to track, identify and manage the situation and eventually bring it under control so the essence of technology cannot be over emphasised,” he said.
