Advent of ICT in Nigeria: ABU’s Excellent Global Performance II

Advent of ICT in Nigeria: ABU’s Excellent Global Performance II

The Huawei Global ICT competition started at national level, proceeded to regional and then ended at global level, which was the final in a series of competitions spanning over a period of one year (May 2018 to May 2019).  Winners at the national level qualified to participate in the regional level and the winners at regional levels obtained tickets for the final competition at the global level. Thus, from the national competition, the winners advance to the regional finals. The winners of the regional finals are then invited to the join the global finals in China.

For the purpose of Huawei competition, Africa is divided into two regions; Maghreb region, (a major region of North Africa that consists primarily of the countries Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Libya, Mauritania and other African Arab) and sub-Sahara Africa where Nigeria belongs.  In Sub-Saharan region alone, about 28,000 students from universities and colleges across took part in the Huawei ICT competition.

As discussed in the first part of this article last week, six overall best students emerged winners of both categories of the Huawei competition at the national level. Surprisingly, all the six overall winners came from the same university, the famous Ahmadu Bello University Zaria. Three of the six students; Muhammad Mustafa Maihaja (400 level computer engineering student), Shuabu Usman Abbas (400 computer science education student and Abdulkadir Babagana Musa (500 level electrical engineering student), each scored 100 percent (1000/1000 points). The other three students; Kamaludeen Umar (500 level electrical engineering), Abdulqudus Adebayo Temi (400 level communication engineering) and Fahad Danladi (500 level computer engineering) scored 98.5 percent, 93.5 percent and 91 percent respectively.

The selected students were divided into two groups; Team A and Team B for effective representation. Team A and B represented the country at the Huawei African Regional Competition that took place in Johannesburg, South Africa. The event was held from 8^th to 11^th March 2019. Team A from Nigeria won overall African Regional ICT competition in South Africa and qualified as the best team to represent Africa at the Global Final in China in the Network Services track. In similar vein, Team B came first in the second category to represent Africa Cloud Services track.  The outcomes of the Huawei ICT African Regional competition made the teams from Nigeria, Tanzania, Kenya and Angola winners of Sub-Saharan Africa to represent the region at the final competition in China. The teams joint 22 teams from across the world to compete for the global champion. The Nigerian Teams deserve unreserved commendation for their sagacity in exhibiting their talents and innovative capacities despite their environmental challenges.

The Huawei ICT Competition is an extension of the Huawei ICT Academy, which establishes mutual cooperation between Huawei and universities across the world. The cooperation aims to improve the ICT education at the university through training of teachers, learning material, curriculum development, and advancement of ICT to address myriad of challenges to global development. While all universities are welcome to participate in the ICT Competition, only the universities that participate in the ICT Academy program, or agree to enroll into the program, can advance to the finals.

The 2019 ICT Competition Global Finals took place on 25 and 26 May at the new Huawei campus in Dongguan, close to the Huawei HQ in Shenzhen. 49 teams from 39 universities and polytechnics in 30 countries travelled to Dongguan where the competition took place. Understandably, out of the 39 Institution of higher learning, 12 represented China. Each team consists of 4 members either from different universities or all from the same university. On Saturday the teams were giving 8 hours to work on challenging tasks by demonstrating their ICT skills. The tasks were divided into three; cloud computing, networking or innovative track. Based on their preferences, each competitor chooses one of the three tasks; either the Cloud Computing, Networking or Innovation track.

The 2019 competition was reported to be the most challenging as testified by one the invited Global ICT experts, Hank Stokbroekx, he wrote in his blog “This year the tasks were particularly challenging as could be seen from the occasional expression of frustration from the participants. There was certainly significant pressure for the students (competitors) to complete the tasks on time, and they had to dig deep in order to make it” (https://blog.huawei.com/2019/05/31/students-hone-their-skills-at-huawei-ict-competition/). He further said “The next day was the award ceremony, but before the students would find out who the 2019 winners were, there were encouraging speeches and a panel discussion with experts from around the world” perhaps to alleviate the tension. After the “formalities” were done it was time for the competitors to find out how well they performed the previous day. “While the enthusiasm and excitement in the room continued to increase, the winners of the 3rd, 2nd and 1st prizes were invited to the stage to receive their award”. Cheers and applause escorted each winner from everyone in the room, making it a true celebration of global happiness. It was an exciting event, with so many enthusiastic students from across the world simultaneously competing with each other and supporting each other. This was in addition to exchange of contacts among the competitors for future personal engagements.

The results of the final competition covered the three tasks; Cloud Computing, Networking and Innovation tracks. The result for the Networking Track indicated that teams from Malaysia and Algeria took the first position while teams from Spain, Pakistan and China took the second position. The third position went to Teams from Nigeria and Iraq. The first position for cloud computing went to teams from Peru and China Gullin University while the second position in this category went to teams from Singapore, Egypt and China Nanjing Institute. In the same category of cloud computing, the third position went to four teams from Bolivia, United Kingdom, Russia and Bahrain. On innovation track, the first position went to one team from China Shanghai University II while the second position went to teams from China Tianjin and China Shanghai University I. The third position on the same category of innovation track went to teams from China SASTECH and China Beijing University. 

The Huawei ICT competition, a global event is certainly generating so much interest among the youths, the leaders of tomorrow. The competition explores and exploits their innovative potential in using ICT to increase system efficiency through effective and result oriented communication. No wonder, since 2015 when the competition started, the number of participating countries, universities and students has increased exponentially. In 2015, there were less than ten participating countries in the competition, which exponentially increased to sixty-one countries in 2018. Again, within the same period, the number of participating universities and colleges increased from 300 to over 1,600 in 2018 with corresponding increase of more than 100,000 participating students.

Before ending this piece, it is important to answer last question I posed in the first part of the article, what are the implications of Nigerian participating and performance in the ICT competition? First, the competition provides hundreds of Nigerian students opportunity to enhance their ICT skill, which is very significant for the development and industrialization of Nigeria and indeed the African continent. Today, ICT is a sine qua non and essential ingredient for the industrialization and advancement of all developed and developing countries. What does this success means to ABU?

Professor Bashir Muazu, the director of Iya Abubakar ICT center who, all through diligently led other ICT gurus to prepare the teams for the competition said, “The competition brought out ABU as a veritable source of world class talents in IT and 21^st century network technology. This is very important considering that recently Huawei overtook Ericsson as number one telecommunications solution provider in the world.” He further said, “the performance of the ABU students and their instructors brought global recognition to the nation and placed Nigeria in a higher pedestal of ICT innovations”. Based on this performance, Huawei facilitated partnership between ABU, Chinese Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech) and UNESCO–ICHE (International Centre for Higher Education Innovation) in China, which led to the signing of tripartite MoU. Indeed, the nation will be the highest beneficiary of this partnership. Nigeria needs to celebrate ABU and other participating universities by providing special grants for acquiring the necessary infrastructure, facilities and capacity building for the development of ICT in the country. Bravo ABU Team and keep it up.

ABU Zaria Excellent Performance at Global Competition

Advent of ICT in Nigeria: ABU Zaria Excellent Performance at Global Competition

Nigeria is a perplex country with stupendous endowments in all spheres of human endeavors, yet the ‘experts’ predicted that the country would become the headquarters of “World poverty” in 2050 by. In my article, titled “World Food Day: Goalkeepers Report and Food Security in Nigeria” published on 8^th December 2018, I quoted the Bill and Melinda Foundation report that stated “by 2050, Nigeria would have 152 million people in extreme poverty out of a projected total population of 429 million people living in extreme poverty in the world”. Going by this figure, the report added that Nigeria will represent about 36% of the total number of people in “extreme poverty” Worldwide. By the same year, 2050, Nigerian population is expected to overshoot to 450 million people, as the third most populous country in the World after India and China.  This means that one out of three people in Nigeria will be among the people in the class of “extreme poverty” in the world. This article can be accessed via https://breakthroughwithmkothman.blogspot.com/2018/12/world-food-day-goalkeepers-report-and_80.html

As the doomsayers were beating their drums on Nigeria situation causing worries, unhappiness and serious concern, a gleam of hope emerges to reinforce our faith in Nigerian prosperous future, Nigerian potential of becoming a great nation. Yes, brighter future awaits Nigeria on the condition of using our political will to transform our massive human resources to human capital. To do this, we simply add ‘skill and education’ to human resources for the magic transformation to human capital.    

Back to ‘a gleam of hope’, the week of 27^th May 2019, local and international media were awash with the excellent performance of Ahmadu Bello University Team in an ICT global competition organized by Huawei in far away China.  Newspapers, both hardcopies and online publications were outdoing each other with cheering headings; “ABU students shine at Global ICT Competition” – Punch edition of 4^th June 2019 (https://punchng.com/abu-students-shine-at-global-ict-competition/) “Huawei ICT Competition 2019 Global Final: ABU Zaria Team Emerges Third” – Mobilitaria edition of 31^st May 2019 (https://www.mobilitaria.com/huawei-ict-competition) “3 ABU Students Win Huawei ICT Prize” – Leadership edition of 31^st May 2019 (https://leadership.ng/2019/05/31/3-abu-students-win-huawei-ict-prize/)   among several other news outlets. Yes, the news was certainly heartwarming considering the poor state of Nigerian educational system. There are inadequate ICT infrastructure, inadequate high skill manpower, crowded lecture theatres inadequate teaching consumables and poorly motivated tutors, which constitute major challenges to teaching and learning. These challenges were aptly captured by the vice chancellor of ABU, Professor Ibrahim Garba, who led the team to China for the competition. Newspapers quoted him on arrival at the Nnamdi Azikiwe “I pity my boys because they went with very limited preparation, from the environment that is limited with resources and infrastructure and we were able to compete with the best of the best in the world”. Yet, these students of ABU Zaria out performed others to emerged the winners of African regional competition and then competed against other students from different continents/regions and took a third position. What could have been, were these students provided with the needed infrastructure and facilities to prepare for the competition?  Your conjecture is as good as mine. What does Huawei ICT competition means? What are the implications of Nigerian performance in the competition?

Huawei is one of the leading global Information and Communication Technology (ICT) solutions providers. As a leader and innovator of ICT technologies, Huawei has developed an ICT industry recognized global Certification program and talent ecosystem. The ‘Huawei ICT Academy’ Program is aimed at addressing the global ‘Digital Skills Crisis’ and ICT skills gap. This is done by actively working with academia in developing multi-skilled engineers with employable skills to help fill the skills gap within the ICT industry sector.

The 2018 - 2019 Huawei ICT competition was the fourth in series with a theme "Connection, Glory, Future". It aims at providing a platform for students to compete and exchange ideas in order to enhance their ICT knowledge, practical and application skills, and raise their innovation awareness. The competition is also a platform that facilitates connections between international talent as well as the collaboration between governmental organizations, higher educational institutions, training agencies, and enterprises, thus promoting the education, growth, and employment of ICT talent. However, the 2019 Huawei ICT was an improvement over the previous ones as it consisted two components; “Practice Competition and Innovation Competition”. The Practice Competition for both a Network Track and a Cloud Track is intended for Huawei ICT Academies worldwide and higher educational institutions that are interested in becoming Huawei ICT Academies. The Innovation Competition uses an invitation-based registration system and is oriented to colleges and universities participating in Huawei ICT Academy's Innovation Talent Center program. The 2019 competition started in 2018 and as at June 2018, the competition had attracted more than 100,000 students from over 1,600 colleges and universities in 61 countries. The 2018-19 final competition had a total of 49 teams from 30 countries.

As part of the improvement, the 2019 competition received more participants from a larger number of countries, was more inclusive and innovative. As part of the competition, Huawei offers free online access of courses and learning materials as well as opportunities for exchanges, learning and preparation to all the participants. By doing so, Huawei hopes to achieve the goal of an equal opportunity for quality education and that more people can benefit from the digital economy. The overall goal for Huawei is to transfer a cumulative of more than 700,000 ICT professionals to the industry by 2023, to bridge the ICT talent gap, advance the digital transformation of industries, and bring digital to every person, home and organization for a fully connected, intelligent world. This will certainly increase the global economic productivity and enhanced livelihood. The Vice President of Huawei Technologies capped it all when he was quoted saying “Huawei understands the value of a good talent ecosystem which is the foundation for a smart future. This ICT Competition is part of our innovative initiatives to support that and promote ICT skills. We believe that this event will inspire more students’ interest in ICT learning in Africa; it provides them with a world-class stage to showcase themselves and consolidate the vital ICT needed for Africa’s development,” said Mr. Xue Man.

In Nigeria, the competition was organized at national level where thousands of students from several universities participated. The final national competition was held on 26^th of October 2018 at Transcorp Hilton Hotel in Abuja. Among other important dignitaries, the NUC Executive Secretary, Minister of Communication, Dr Adebayo Shitu, the Vice Chancellors of ABU Zaria, FUT Minna, UNN, AUN Yola and Lead City University Ibadan witnessed the event. At the end of the national competition, six students emerged as the overall best winners to represent the country at African Regional competition in South Africa. Coincidently and surprisingly, the six overall best students came from the same university, the famous Ahmadu Bello University Zaria. Three of the six students; Muhammad Mustafa Maihaja (400 level computer engineering student), Shuabu Usman Abbas (400 computer science education student and Abdulkadir Babagana Musa (500 level electrical engineering student), each scored 100 percent (1000/1000 points). The other three students; Kamaludeen Umar (500 level electrical engineering), Abdulqudus Adebayo Temi (400 level communication engineering) and Fahad Danladi (500 level computer engineering) scored 98.5 percent, 93.5 percent and 91 percent respectively.

The selected students were divided into two groups; Team A and Team B for effective representation. Team A and B represented the country at the Huawei African Regional Competition that took place in Johannesburg, South Africa. The event was held from 8^th to 11^th March 2019. Team A from Nigeria won overall African Regional ICT competition in South Africa and qualified as the best team to represent Africa at the Global Final in China in the Network Services track. In similar vein, Team B came first in the second category to represent Africa Cloud Services track. From the outcomes of the Huawei ICT African Regional competition, all were set for the Nigerian Teams to globally exhibit their talents and innovative capacity despite their environmental challenges. (To be concluded next week) 

ABU Zaria Creates Waves in Use of Nuclear Technology II

ABU Zaria Creates Waves in Use of Nuclear Technology II

As a corollary to the last week article, readers can see that the advent of nuclear technology in the fourth decade of twentieth century and its dreadful impacts on humanity made the world a fearful planet to live. Uncertainty and anxiety were the order of the day during the “Cold war” era and People were just living by the day. What could have been the effect, if any of the opposing forces fire missiles carrying nuclear armament on each other? Among the anti-nuclear movements, women groups fought gallantly through peaceful demonstration that forced the world to initiate Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Today, the world is safer and pleasurable to live, thanks to diligence and perseverance of women. We were made to look for a better and more beneficial ways of using the nuclear technology. It is crystal clear that a nuclear attack anywhere will ultimately affect the global economy negatively no matter the distance from where the attack occurs. This understanding underscores the importance of the way Nigeria is handling the only certified nuclear reactor in ABU Zaria.

Nigeria has been a signatory to all treaties and additional protocols on the safe, secure and peaceful use of nuclear energy including the Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Recently, the country played a key role in the ratification of the Pelindaba treaty, which created a Nuclear Weapons Free Zone (NWFZ) in Africa. In pursuing the goal of the treaty, Nigeria eventually converted the highly enriched uranium (HEU) nuclear reactor to fuel containing low-enriched uranium (LEU). This feat makes Nigeria a Nuclear weapons free country, a feat that was achieved with full cooperation and active participation of the nuclear scientists of Ahmadu Bello University Zaria. Now back to the questions posed in the first of this article; how was the conversion from highly enriched uranium to low enriched uranium achieved? Was the conversion necessary?  

At least four countries; USA, Russia, China and Czech Republic in addition to IAEA were involved in the conversion of Nigeria’s reactors. Nigeria was supported technically and financially to make the conversion and make the country a nuclear friendly nation. IAEA played a role of a regulator, which ensured the importation of the material from China to Nigeria was properly done in accordance with the requirement of international trade. This was to Nigeria from being accused of importing nuclear weapons illegally. The agency gave Nigeria the required license, transport criteria and safety requirements to transport the material through the air routes. People from Czech Republic provided the tools required in the manipulation of and installation of the new core while the Russians provided the platform for movement of the material across the world. They transported the material from Nigeria to China and from China to Nigeria because they have the certificate to move any nuclear material across the globe. They assisted in handling the material to ensure its safety and that radiation protection measures were properly and strictly observed during the transition. United States of America supported Nigeria financially when it became clear that Nigeria couldn’t afford required resources to fabricate new core, which was in millions of dollars USA provided the needed financial resources for the materials to be fabricated by the Chinese and transported to Nigeria. The Chinese played the technical role of doing the fabrication for the fuel that would certify the requirement of the Nigerian reactor. Before this conversion was done, the process took almost ten years as explained by the Executive Director of Center for Energy and Training, Prof. Yusuf Ahmed to Daily Trust, a national newspaper “There are challenges in searching for the required fuel that can give you the required power. It took the international community more than 10 years in the selection of the required fuel, until we arrived at the fuel that can deliver the required power. For instance, our reactor used to be 30kW with HEU and now it is 34kW with LEU, so we have upgraded the power. While you are trying to downgrade and blend the fuel content, you are also upgrading the power. This means that the capacity to do the work was more than what the reactor was before. So, while non-technical personnel would say the reactor was reduced in terms of fuel usage, technical personnel would tell you the reactor was upgraded”

At the university’s Center of Energy and Training, two project management teams were constituted for the conversion activities and while the Convert Team worked closely with the Argonne National Laboratory, USA, for all activities related to the new LEU core including its transportation from Beijing, China to Zaria, Nigeria and loading into the reactor, “the Remove Team in conjunction with Idaho National Laboratory was saddled with responsibility of removing the old HEU core and its return to China.”

The HEU conversion for Nigeria was necessitated by world commitment to reduce nuclear risk. Security and vulnerabilities associated with nuclear fuel cycle and HEU stockpiles in civilian facilities are realities of nuclear security threat. Furthermore, there is need to integrate nuclear security with nuclear safety in the wake of the Fukushima disaster as a way to encourage the nuclear renaissance. Prof Ahmed further explained “In civilian research facilities, we need to have materials that are not of weapons-grade and incidentally, in the nuclear industry, if you enrich uranium to a certain percentage or more than 20% it becomes a weapon-grade material and in Nigeria our research reactor is powered by fuel containing HEU (90.2%) above the 20% approved limit. Internationally, weapon-grade material should best be in military facilities and not civilian related. So, to conform to global threat reduction initiatives, Nigeria, had signed the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and all other conventions related to that and in view of that, Nigeria became a partner to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). This project started in 2005 when the IAEA constituted a research project to find alternative fuels for reactors of this nature that have HEU fuel as their core so as to get LEU for the core to serve all other parameters on what the reactor will do with the HEU”.

   The Centre has over the years successfully used peaceful applications of Nuclear Science and Technology to diverse sectors of the Nigerian economy. These include agriculture, water resource management, oil and gas industry and other industries, and the solid mineral sectors,

One of the uses of nuclear technology at CERT is soil fertility mapping in all parts of Nigeria. The mapping indicates different soil nutrients quantitatively and qualitatively. This information on soil map is a sine qua non to an excellent plan for agriculture in the country. Currently, there is indiscriminate fertilizer application by farmers nationwide. However, the use of the soil fertility map could be a fantabulous tool for guidance of farmers on the types and quantity of fertilizer needed on their farms. It could be more efficient and certainly more effective, if soils are evaluated to know their nutrient requirements. Similarly, the nuclear technology is being used for water resources management. The center can carry out groundwater evaluation to determine the age of water, its recharge and discharge rate, and thus, the quantity and how best to manage the water body. Again, the center is one of the very few facilities that render radiation services for all radiation workers in the country. These include people in the hospitals using x-ray machines and also those in the oil industry using radiation sources. In health sector, radiation sources are used for both diagnosis and therapy. The center trained several people who could evaluate radiation doses for the treatment of patients and also for monitoring of workers in hospital. In similar vein, nuclear technology at CERT, if adequately utilized, can drastically reduce the recurring problems leading to the shutting down of the country’s refineries. There is portable equipment that can be used to troubleshoot at refineries to identify malfunctioning column in the refinery using radiation sources. It scan through the facility, find the problem tray and go directly to where you have the problem, repair it and go back to operations with a shorter shut down period. This technology is a readily available option to what obtains today where refineries are usually shut down for a very long time to fix problems. Without this technology, refineries have to be shut down and then check tray- by- tray to detect where the problem is, address it and then resume production for which very valuable time are wasted.

In conclusion, ABU Zaria through its famous CERT can render several services to various university teaching hospitals and research institutes using radioactive substances and the only Nigeria’s Miniature Neutron Source Reactors (MNSR). Are the stakeholders taking advantage of this valuable asset and services at ABU Zaria? When will the nation address the recurrent and annoying electricity problem in the country using nuclear technology? The ball is in the court Nigerian leaders; perhaps President Buhari will focus his attention on the low hanging fruit at this second tenure.