A Kenyan – Chrispin Mwakidisa - has emerged tops in a global competition organized by Cisco competition to identify and reward the best students from the firm’s Networking Academy programme.

The 26-year old Mwakidisa beat a strong contingent of other competitors composed of 117 contesters from 41 countries, emerged the winner in the international NetAcad student competition and went to the USA for a 5-day study tour of Cisco head offices.

The competition begun on July 1 2009, when Cisco Networking Academy students from 41 countries in Europe and Emerging Markets (EEM) – where Africa is categorized - pitched their skills against each other in the final of the EEM Netriders networking competition.

A total of 117 contestants, who had won places in the final following a series of local competitions and heats, battled it out simultaneously across a five hour time zone. Three students from Kenya who had previously participated in a National Competition on the 17 June 2009, participated in this event.

The finalists were then challenged to a one hour multiple-choice quiz and a 90-minute practical networking task using Cisco’s ‘Packet Tracer’ network simulation software at an event held at AFRALTI (Africa Advanced Level Telecommunications Institute) in Nairobi.

The Cisco Networking Academy programme, meant to give an opportunity to access ICT education to those from impoverished backgrounds, consists of IT Essentials, CCNA (Cisco Certified Network Administrator), CCNP (Cisco Certified Network Professional) and CCIE (Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert) - the highest level of industry technical expertise.

“The quiz involved questions from the CCNA (Cisco Certified Network Administrator) programme. The first part was the theory and was done online while the second part was also online and involved using the network simulator,” says Mwakidisa.

“After the two quizzes – theory and practicals – we were then graded on our performance,” says Mwakidisa, who went to Nairobi’s Starehe Boys’ Centre for his secondary education.

Five winners were then announced at the end of the session, with each winning a place on the Cisco Networking Academy study trip to the San Jose headquarters of Cisco, with Mwakidisa being among the top 5, after emerging tops in the Middle East and Africa (MEA) region.

He afterwards flew to US early this year, spending a working week at Cisco head offices, while meeting with senior executives, systems engineers and experts from Cisco and other IT organizations before coming back to Kenya.

Mwakidisa, a former IT student at Kenya’s JKUAT, graduated in 2008 and has since then pursued courses offered by the Cisco’s Networking Academy program.

On his experiences, Mwakidisa who is currently undertaking his CCNP exams, says that most of the firms he learnt about while in the US were formed from ideas.

“Cisco was for example formed by a couple working as lab technicians in different offices who needed to connect and communicate with each other. This led to the creation of the first router,” says Mwakidisa.

“We need to transform ideas into projects. We need to empower the people in order to grow the economy,” he says.

Hital Muraj, Cisco’s Networking Academy manager for Northern and Eastern Africa says that the Networking Academy programme was conceived from the idea that “education and internet access are the greatest equalizers in the world and break all barriers.”

“It offers same quality, same content and same mode of delivery to all students enrolled. A student in Kenya gets the same kind of education to a student in US and same certification,” says Muraj.

Currently, Kenya has 27 academies, enrolling over 6,000 students since 2003 when the first academy was established. The Networking Academies are based at various public institutions including JKUAT, Maseno, Kenyatta and Egerton Universities among others while other academies have been set up in both middle level colleges and secondary schools.     

 The global technology education program, aimed to provide students with networking and technical skills for the job market, has since its inception over ten years ago, established centres in some 160 countries globally, with about 750,000 students enrolled annually.