by MTHULISI SIBANDA
JOHANNESBURG – HUAWEI has partnered the Department of Small Business Development (DSDB) and academic institutions to commence a developer competition bringing together South African developers, startups and student teams to build cloud-powered solutions to tackle real-world challenges.
It is held under the aegis of the Code4Mzansi. The Universities of Cape Town, Johannesburg, Pretoria and Witwatersrand are partners.
The programme provides access to Huawei Cloud’s full suite of tools, application programming interfaces (APIs) and platforms, enabling participants to transform ideas into deployable prototypes.
Additionally, participants will benefit from technical mentorship, cross-border collaboration opportunities, professional networking, and comprehensive support for prototyping, piloting and scaling solutions with cloud infrastructure.
“South Africa’s digital vision is both ambitious and inspiring,” states Rex Lei, President of Huawei Cloud Sub-Saharan Africa.
Through the Huawei Developer Competition, the company is calling upon visionary builders who aspire to create lasting change for their communities and the world.
“Participants will accelerate cloud and AI adoption while connecting African innovation with global opportunities,” Lei said.
Stella Ndabeni, Minister of DSDB, said the continent’s youth population was expanding rapidly with young Africans expected to make up 42 percent of global youth by 2030.
“This trend will continue well into the future,” she said.
“We cannot afford to be left behind in the digital era. We need to be inventive and innovative, and create opportunities for ourselves.”
Ndabeni thus welcomed the partnership with Huawei.
The competition attracts a total of 353 teams consisting of 1 041 participants.
The first phase of online training is complete. Participants have three months to develop and submit their projects. After submission, projects go through a preliminary online screening round to select the top 20, who then pitch in the semi-finals online.
The top ten advance to the National Grand Finale, where they will give a ten-minute in-person presentation to a panel of judges.
The grand prize is slightly under R1 million.
– CAJ News
