Botho University students make a mark
’MAPALO NKHELOANE
MASERU – Seeiso Seetsa and Thuso Sehloho of Botho University from its Maseru Campus were yesterday honoured with awards from Huawei after they scooped the third prize in a Regional ICT Competition held in Johannesburg, South Africa in December 2018.
The competition, which attracted 38 students from across all semesters and included students from 11 African countries, was organised by Asian tech giant Huawei.
Huawei is a leading global information and communication technology solution provider.
The Huawei ICT competition plays an important role in motivating students to push themselves and demonstrate determination, commitment and perseverance to overcome challenges.
The competition also aims to develop a platform for government organisations, higher education institutions, enterprises and students to support ICT education.
The Huawei competition not only recognises and rewards students’ achievements in technology, but also provides guidance for future career development.
In December last year, Botho University’s Maseru campus hosted the Huawei Boot camp training for students in the Faculty of Computing.
In order to fully participate in the digital economy, companies and organisations need professionals with an in-depth digital technology expertise.
Botho University is one of the registered tertiary institutions in Lesotho offering a range of programmes in accounting, business, computing, health, finance and education.
It established its campus in Lesotho in 2015. In the short time it has become “one of the most preferred tertiary institutions in Lesotho”.
Speaking at the Huawei awards ceremony at Kingdom Lounge, Maseru Mall on Tuesday the Huawei Africa representative, Khanyisile Ndumo, indicated that in this great era, technology is changing the world rapidly.
She noted people see the fast development of intelligent technologies such as cloud, big data, artificial intelligence and machine learning.
Ndumo said countries and industries around the world are now investing more human, financial and material resources in ICT construction.
They are constantly upgrading existing ICT networks and improving their digital strategy.
“But these ICT development strategies cannot be achieved without sufficient talent support so we all know ICT talent and professionals development are the foundation and core elements of ICT development and the digital economy,” Ndumo said.
She continued: “Our vision as Huawei is to bring digital to every person, home and organisation for a fully connected, intelligent world. In the past 30 years, we have made lots of efforts to train ICT talent through our Huawei Authorised Information and Network Academy, Huawei ICT Academy, by sharing our knowledge and practice we have learnt over the years.
“We team up with education institutions, industry associations, and partners to build a platform for ICT talent that allows us to make full use of our experience in ICT and continue to invest in the talent to cope with future challenges.
“Today we aspire to build global standards for ICT talent development and certification”.
Also speaking at the award giving ceremony, the Chief Executive Officer of BEDCO, ’Makatleho Matobooe, said he was overwhelmed by what Botho University is doing for Basotho.
She also indicated that people get scared at the mention of ICT as they fear that jobs are going to be lost.
Matobooe assured such people that that would not be the case as ICT will, instead, help penetrate the markets that could not be penetrated using traditional methods of advertising products.
“When I talk from the industry I say I do not want Botho University students to be employed anywhere but by themselves.
“Gone are the days when we used to talk about traditional entrepreneurship; we want to talk about modern entrepreneurship and with ICT that is going to be very possible,” Matobooe said.
She further explained that when talking about business or entrepreneurship, one of the things one gets into business for is to make money and in order for one to make money, products have to be marketed and that is only possible if one is ICT literate.
The Huawei ICT competition South Africa finalist Seeiso Seetsa expressed gratitude to the Huawei management for coming up with the bright idea of the annual Huawei competition.
He also thanked the management for recognising and granting Botho University students an opportunity to join the competition as it aims to provide a platform for global talents to promote high quality ICT talent, and sustainable ICT ecosystem.
“It is through this competition that I acquired routing and switching skills. I would also love to thank the Huawei staff who came here last year to conduct boot camp classes. I would also like to thank the university’s staff for the extreme motivation and support they gave us throughout the competition,” Seetsa said.
