By Salisu Ibrahim
Students of Ahmadu Bello University Zaria, made Nigeria proud as the ABU Team won two grand prizes at the 10th Huawei ICT skills global finals.
A statement from the office of Public Affairs Directorate,
Office of the Vice-Chancellor,
Ahmadu Bello University, signed by the Director, Malam Auwal Umar said,the global finals took place in Shenzhen in China between 2nd and 5th of June, 2026.
The competitions were in the network, cloud, computing, and AI/innovation tracks. A total of 177 teams from 40 countries participated in the global finals.
At the award ceremony in Shenzhen in China on 5th June, 2026, after the global finals, the students received two grand prizes – one first position in cloud and one second position in computing.
Additionally, three of the students who formed ‘TeamABU2026’ were presented with the ‘Women in Tech’ award together with the Nigeria Network Team.
It would be recalled that the competition kicked off in October, 2025 with over 220,000 students worldwide.
The students, after the rigorous national finals in December, 2025 and Southern Africa regional finals in March, 2026, qualified for the global finals.
The network, cloud, and computing tracks finals were an eight-hour lab scenario setup requiring the students to solve real-world use cases. It took place on Tuesday, 2nd June, 2026.
And on Wednesday, 3rd June, 2026, the AI/innovation finals took place. It was the competition’s major highlight requiring the students to design and develop AI based solutions using Huawei technologies.
Winning the grand prize in AI/innovation by Team ABU 2026 with the ‘ParaVision’, which was their entry, was also a major highlight.
ParaVision is an AI-powered using the Orange Pi AIProbuilt around the Huawei Ascend 310B4 chip.
ParaVision is able to test both simultaneously or independently, generating printed lab reports in under three minutes. It also has a multilingual interface – French, Arabic, Chinese, Swahili, etc.
The students included Kumba-Banna Tekanyi, Computer Engineering; Yakubu Musa Yakubu, Computer Science; Adekunle Abdulroqeeb Oladimeji, Electrical Engineering; and Wakili Sefiu Bolaji, Computer Engineering.
Others are Yunus Muhammad, Electronics & Telecom Engineering; Ruqayyah Hassan Labo, Electronics & Telecom Engineering; Khadija Khalid, Computer Engineering; and Grace Temitayo Olorunfemi, Computer Engineering.
They excelled at the global finals under the guidance of two technical instructors – Dr Bashir Halliru Sani, IAIICT, and Dr Zaharaddeen Haruna, Computer Engineering.
The Vice-Chancellor, Prof Adamu Ahmed, graced the occasion along with the Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Academic, Prof Raymond B Bako.
Others from the university that attended the event were the Director, Distance Learning Centre, Prof Muhammed Bashir Mu’azu and the Director, IAIICT, Prof Emmanuel Adewale Adedokun.