A team of South African students has shared the top honours in a global competition to develop and recognise ICT talent around the world.
The team, from the Tshwane University of Technology (TUT) shared the first prize in the Huawei 2016-2017 ICT Skill Competition held in Shenzhen, China with a Chinese team from Guangdong.
The two teams beat off 7 500 other contenders to win the competition.
Fumani Shibamu, Themba Sivate and Sidwell Shalang, from TUT shared the podium with a local team comprising Jingzhong Mai, Lu Huang, and Jianyu Peng from Guangdong.
Overall 12 000 students across the world registered for the challenge, which was undertaken globally by 7 500.
A total of 32 teams sat the final eight-hour test that examined their knowledge of routers, switching, security, WLAN, cloud, storage and big data.
A gruelling eight-hour practical examination tested their knowledge of IP and ICT subjects, and their ability to solve problems as a team.
Maolu Sun, from Huawei’s Enterprise BG Service Department, comments: “Cloud, big data and security are becoming very significant issues for enterprises which need to recruit enough ICT talent with the knowledge and skills for such technologies.
“The problem is there are not enough trained and skilled people across the globe for these jobs, especially at the higher end of the knowledge scale.
“So far we have trained over 200 000 students to help us meet our goal of 800 000 ICT workers across the world.”
SA students share global honours
