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The UNESCO Regional Office for Eastern Africa and Huawei Kenya organized a virtual closing ceremony on 18 May 2021, to conclude a series of Artificial Intelligence (AI) Technology trainings they had organized in August 2020 and April 2021. This is a follow up action based on the MOU signed between UNESCO and Huawei in 2019 for digital skills development in Africa.

Due to the pandemic, what used to be in-person training was offered virtually, but also because of that, people from different regions could benefit from the AI training. One hundred seventeen (117) university/college faculty members (including 42 women) from 14 African countries including Cameroon, Chad, Comoros, Congo, Djibouti, Equatorial Guinea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Madagascar, Mauritius, Rwanda, Seychelles, South Sudan and Uganda were nominated by the National Commissions for UNESCO of their countries in the two batches of UNESCO-Huawei online training on AI Technology.

The Director of the UNESCO Regional Office for Eastern Africa, Ms. Ann Therese Ndong-Jatta, opened the ceremony alongside the Deputy CEO of Huawei Kenya, Ms. Tao Pan. Ms. Jingwen Xu, the ICT Academy Manager from Huawei Southern Africa Regional Office made a presentation of the UNESCO-Huawei AI training programme review and Huawei Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Academy. Lecturers and trainees gave speeches on their experiences during the training. A virtual distribution of certificates to the trainees also took place to acknowledge their proactive performance in the training, and encourage them to integrate AI into their teaching course for the benefit of students in the African region.

Ms. Ann Therese Ndong-Jatta expressed her gratitude to Huawei for their collaboration with UNESCO and contributions to enhancing digital skills of university teachers. She urged all the trainees to explore the possibilities of including lessons learnt in their university courses as they return as trainers and also serve as role models for the next generation. She reiterated the commitment of UNESCO to continue the collaboration with Huawei to facilitate human resource development that meets the knowledge, competencies, skills, innovation and creativity required of today’s digital transformation.

During the closing ceremony, Mr. Jayakumar Ramasamy, Head of Natural Sciences Sector at UNESCO Regional Office for Eastern Africa also noted future plans of the partnership including expanding the training to more countries in Africa to offer expert level AI training.

In her opening remarks, Ms. Tao Pan underlined that Kenya was the first African country to benefit from Huawei’s AI training. She was happy to see the collaboration with UNESCO giving rise to the training of people outside of Kenya and reaching 14 countries in Africa. She acknowledged the Academy Instructors for their time and dedication to the training. She further congratulated all the trainees for successful completion of training.

The trainees thanked UNESCO and Huawei for the valuable opportunity and pledged to apply the skills and knowledge obtained in fostering digital education in their respective educational institutions.