COVID-19: Huawei ICT Academy hosts online training for students across Nigeria

Huawei Technologies has not relented on its efforts to ensure Nigerian students registered under its Authorised Information and Network Academy where they will be trained in core ICT skills in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The company moved its classes online, engaging hundreds of students across the country on their computer screens from the comfort of their homes.

The Huawei Authorised Information and Network Academy (HAINA) in collaboration with more than 70 universities in Nigeria was established to train students for free in the latest internationally relevant ICT skills in subjects such as Networks, Cloud Computing and Big Data. As of today, over 10,000 Nigerian students have benefitted.

In an exclusive interview with some of the teachers and students, we got insights into the structure of the Huawei ICT Academy online training programme and its impact.

Lawal Ahmad Alassan, head of IT Technical Support Unit, Kastina State Institute of Technology and Management, who is also a Huawei Academy instructor in Routing, Switching,

Storage and Security, said his first batch of online classes held from May 10 – 15, 2020, and had between 75 and 50 students from different educational institutions from all over Nigeria.

He said classes were split into two of 40 students each. The training was structured for three hours daily with breaks in between. The entire course was broken down into 4-5 topics daily.

Speaking about his experience teaching the students online, he said, “It was a wonderful experience coming from a virtual classroom organised by Huawei. The students were so overwhelmed and as we speak now we have over 250 students waiting to be trained and still making enquiries and application for training. To some of the students it was a new experience and they never thought they could achieve such training process while staying at home.”

Excited about the regular participation of the students, he said, “The online training has made instructors and the students bother less about the lockdown because we have been made to acquire knowledge through Huawei’s training platform in the most incredible manner. With these trainings, the ICT industry in Nigeria would grow faster.