Nurture the victorious Nigerian students who won laurels at GICT contest—Expert
Technology expert and software wizkid, Mr. Emeka Ifedi, has called on the Federal Government to collaborate with industry entrepreneurs in nurturing the victorious team of Nigerian students that clinched the third place at the finals of the Global Information and Communication Technology (GICT) Competition organised by Huawei Technologies in Dongguan, China recently.
In an interview, he decried that “The major problem of related talent haunts in Nigeria is the way and manner discovered talents are left alone after the contest to struggle on their own”.
“If you spend fortunes to discover talents, there is nothing wrong in spending a little more to nurture them to fruition so that the initial expenses made on them will become meaningful with encouraging return on investments.
“It will amount to efforts in futility if after the celebration of their third position in China, there is no continuing programme designed for their further development.
He added that even though the sponsor of the competition in China, Huawei has expressed commitment to build capacity of Nigerian youths to have well cultivated ICT talents for the future to drive innovation and technology in Nigeria, government and indigenous corporates need to cash in to help the students make good use of their experience going forward.
He therefore called on federal agencies like NITDA and NOTAP to take it up from where Huawei stopped so that the gains of their trip to China would be useful to the economy in no distant time.
Business Hilights recalls that the team of Nigerian students from the Ahmadu Bello University (ABU) competed with 49 other teams from 30 countries.
The final results of the competition showed that Nigerian students ranked number one in Africa, leading with 790.4 points, followed by Tanzania (745.6), Kenya (737) and Angola (700.8).
In his remarks while welcoming the contestants at the Nnamdi Azikiwe Airport Abuja, the Managing Director of Huawei Technologies (Abuja Office), Tank Li, noted that Huawei ICT Competition is a global ICT talent exchange event, which comprises Huawei Authorised Information, Network Academy universities and Huawei ICT Academy.
He said “Huawei understands the value of a good talent ecosystem, which is the foundation for a smart future, adding that “Huawei has made a lot of effort to cultivate ICT talents by sharing accumulated knowledge systems and best practices in the last 30 years”.
