The winners of the Huawei ICT Competition Southern Africa 2018-19 were awarded trophies in Johannesburg on March 10. And, they will soon set off for China for the final global competition.

Yusuf Hamisi, 26, is a first-year information technology student at the Open University of Tanzania, who was part of the winning team.

"This is such a great opportunity. I didn't know that it would open so many doors for me," he says, adding that this is important for them.

About 28,000 students from universities and colleges across the sub-Saharan region took part in the competition, with teams from Nigeria and Tanzania clinching victories.

The winners, together with teams from Kenya and Angola will join another 22 teams from across the world to compete in May.

Huawei is a global provider of information and communication technology. And its ICT competition, carried out at national, regional and global levels, has become one of the largest in the world, attracting around 80,000 participants this year.

Huawei's vice-president Mark Xue told the students at the award ceremony that the ICT competition is a global platform for the exchange of ideas and an important part of Huawei's talent development strategy.

"I am very pleased that we have enhanced mutual understanding through this journey for the development of your country and this promising continent," he said.

Wang Daoyu, first secretary of education at the Chinese embassy in South Africa, says providing hundreds of African students with information and communication technology skills is significant for the development and industrialization of the continent, and is essential for the industrialization and development of all developing countries.

The competition is also key for people-to-people exchanges, and it has brought so many together for the betterment of lives and people from Africa, Wang says.