Huawei, Galaxy Backbone Unveil ICT Lab In ATBU Varsity

Huawei Technologies Company Nigeria Limited in collaboration with Galaxy Backbone Limited has unveiled the Huawei ICT Academy Laboratory in Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University (ATBU).

The unveiling followed the donation of a world class ICTlaboratory equipment to the ICT academy in ATBU, which is said to be focused on helping students grow in their understanding and practice of Datacom, WLAN, Security, Cloud Computing, Storage, Intelligent Computing, among others.

According to Huawei Technologies, the project would support teaching operations, cultivating student ICT talent in the university, boosting entrepreneurship skills and contributing to the overall ICT development in Nigeria.

The Managing Director of Galaxy Backbone Limited, Professor Muhammad Abubakar, who contributed significantly to the partnership between the both companies, in his remarks said: “This year, Huawei took a step further and donated lab equipment to some universities that have been actively involved in ICT talents development. And in close collaboration with the Galaxy Backbone Nigeria, ATBU Bauchi was selected as one of the recipients. This equipment will avail the students of ATBU Bauchi with the opportunity to practice with live equipment and get a better understanding of the technology according to the industry standard.”

Huawei in partnership with Galaxy have also gone ahead to provide job and internship opportunities to many Nigerian students within three years, many of these students have gone ahead to become pace setters for other students across the country in technological advancement. Through this new development, 50 internship/NYSC opportunities will be provided to excellent Nigerian students and students of ATBU Bauchi, who have shown dedication and commitment in improving themselves in the ICT industry standards and technology. Excellent students from ATBU Bauchi will also get the opportunity to participate and represent Nigeria in the next Huawei ICT skills competition in 2021, and also the Huawei Seed for the future students program, this will further enhance the technology knowledge for students of ATBU Bauchi,” Abubakar further said.

The ATBU Vice-Chancellor, Professor Mohammed Abdulazeez, during the ceremony in Bauchi, commended Huawei Technologies for enlisting the university in this initiative and applauded the company’s contribution to technology innovation and advancement in Nigeria. According to him, the ICT academy laboratory would provide students with qualitative hands-on practical telecommunications and ICT training in line with the building functional skills of the students. “This is especially given that the development of the skilled workforce across all sectors of the economy has become national priority,” he added.

Huawei Channel Training Manager, Mr. Kenneth Igwe, explained that the establishment of Huawei ICT Academy would help students to align with industry requirements by mastering the latest ICT technologies. He said “the training offers an internationally recognized certification which equips the students with global standard skills that qualifies them for ICT jobs anywhere in the world. Huawei has collaborated with several universities and colleges in Nigeria to build ICT academies, which provide training for more students annually.”

To further improve the hands-on experience for the students, Huawei offered to build an ICT lab with state of the art ICT equipment for the university,” he added.
Since the Talents eco system was launched in Nigeria in 2017, Huawei has trained over 10,000 Nigerian students, with 4,000 of those trained students going on to take and pass various professional certification exams in different technology field, such as Routing and Switching, Big Data, Cloud Computing, Storage, Security, Wlan, Artificial Intelligence and transmission. Within the same period,Huawei has also trained over 200 teachers, lecturers and instructors as certified trainers, today there are over 180 Huawei Certified Academy instructors.