Huawei ICT and Botswana Open University (BOU) have signed a fresh memorandum of agreement (MOU) as the academy intends to help the institution train instructors to, among others, match the learning demands and update the course content.
ICT Academy was established to meet the skill requirements of the industry and generate more employment especially in the rural parts of the country – it mainly originates from the Indian Government in collaboration with the United States government and industries.
In a keynote speech, Huawei Managing Director (MD) Kayden Yehuihui said they cherish their marriage with BOU.
“We completely value our budding relationship with BOU as it started when the project took a while to be finally executed due to a regulatory process that BOU had to undergo to fulfill the Botswana Qualifications Authority (BQA) requirements of transformation from a college to the fully-fleshed University,” he said.
Yehuihui further highlighted that since the institution succeeded in this regard, they are reviving the partnership, “We will be reviving our partnership for the next three years to enable students to access their training center in real-time,” Yehuihui highlights.
The Huawei MD further shed some more light on how the partnership would look like, “Today’s auspicious occasion entails that the signing of the MOU is to further enhance both parties’s mutual vision, dedication and partnership. This means that BOU is fully registered under Huawei ICT Academy and has a full mandate to resource through online or directly in field of routing and switching,” he explained.
BOU Deputy Vice Chancellor Proffessor Frank Youngman expressed his gratitude for the partnership, “My love for Huawei dates back to 2017 when I was in Beijing at a Technology Exhibition and ‘smart education’ presented by Huawei and that sparked a lot of interest and we immediately decided to form a partnership which started back in April 2018, and we were excited because Huawei had a massive research development plan,” he said.
Furthermore, Youngman stated that Huawei has been a vital figure to play in Africa and their footprint has been mostly seen here in Botswana, “ Huawei has been integral in some of the projects like Safer City in Gaborone and Francistown which curb crime, just to mention a few.We saw it fit to have a partner in the ICT area as we believe that we can promote national developments objectives with regards to those around the concept of a knowledge based economy,” he stated.
According to Youngman, “Industry-ready IT professionals are needed in this growing economy and we are leveraging this partnership to empower learners with key IT skills and we are grateful to Huawei to have granted us this opportunity and we will make use of it,” he said.
