The Microsoft Africa Development Centre’s (ADC) Game of Learners (GOL), has launched the Season 4 of its Coding Competition for university students across selected African countries.

The GOL initiative, according to Ruth Ferland, Senior Program Manager at ADC, and the founder of the Game of Learners Program in a statement on Monday, will provide an opportunity for African university students who aspiring software engineers and solution builders, to improve their technical and coding abilities while creating solutions to current challenges facing the continent and the world.

In this year’s competition, participants will be working to develop possible technology solutions that can address different health challenges, including how to improve healthcare service provision in their localities or other parts of the world, she said.

The program runs as a 5-week hackathon with teams captained by Microsoft Learn Student Ambassadors crafting the innovations while receiving technical training from Microsoft’s professionals.

“Since we launched Game of Learners four years ago, we have seen incredible development in the learner’ skills through each season as they create incredibly clever solutions to some of Africa’s pressing problems using Microsoft technology,” Ferland said.

“The students will benefit from the instruction of 32 coaches and more than 20 advisors who will guide them through the process of learning new technologies and building their solutions.”

“At the end of the season, the winning team will be eligible for awards, including collaboration with GOL Season 4 partners to advance their solution and entry into the Microsoft Imagine Cup, where they will present their innovation on a global stage,” she said.

Participants at the ongoing Huawei Talk currently ongoing in Casablanca, Morocco, has blamed a 15-year gap in the country’s digital strategy as an hindrance to its ambitions of becoming a regional tech hub.

The keynote speaker at the event, Nabil Ouchagour, Huawei’s Chief Brand Officer, in his speech, argued that the lack of qualified labor is one of four major challenges facing Morocco on its journey to becoming a digital nation.

“While Morocco is currently on the run to become a regional tech hub, the country lags behind in terms of qualified labor,” the Huawei executive said on Saturday.

The event which tech brings experts to deliberate on key issues facing Morocco’s transition to a digital economy, are deliberating on Morocco’s critical digital-skill gap which is seen as an emerging core challenge facing the country’s ambitions to host tech-related business activities.

“In many universities, the skills that are being taught will be obsolete soon,” Ouchagour noted, suggesting that Morocco’s digital-skill gap is the core challenge facing the country’s ambitions to host tech-related business activities.

“Developing connectivity, data treatment capability, decarbonization are equally crucial to support this transition,” he added.

Citing research commissioned by Huawei in 2021, the executive argued that Morocco needs to focus on adapting its education system to the fast-moving digital world.

“The country should equally focus on training individuals capable of adapting and acquiring new skills as they enter the job market.”