"picoCTF-Africa Sees Significant Growth in Competition's Second Year"
Cybersecurity remains a global concern, with a lack of skilled professionals worsening the problem. Therefore, Carnegie Mellon's picoCTF-Africa, a computer security competition for high school, undergraduate, and graduate students on the African continent, seeks to raise awareness and introduce the future workforce to the cybersecurity field. In its second year, the cybersecurity hacking competition attracted more than 1,250 students, with the number of female competitors doubling and the number of high school competitors increasing by over 365 percent. In addition, four teams finished in the top 50 on the global leaderboard for picoCTF, showing the immediate impact of the effort. Assane Gueye, co-director of the Upanzi Network and CyLab-Africa initiatives and associate teaching professor at CMU-Africa, commented that cybersecurity is rarely considered when young Africans consider possible career paths. Students entering college lack cybersecurity awareness, and those who explore the field typically do so after getting an undergraduate degree in computer science. However, picoCTF-Africa aims to change this by introducing cybersecurity to high school students across the continent. This article continues to discuss the growth seen by Carnegie Mellon's picoCTF-Africa.