Huawei wants to help businesses become AI-ready with better performance, capacity, and security, and will intensify the rollout of AI-enabled tech such as OceanStor A800 to support digital transformation in Africa.
At the Huawei Africa Connect 2024 conference in Johannesburg yesterday, executives of the Chinese giant outlined multiple product lines using intelligent technology.
David Wang, executive director and chairman of the ICT infrastructure managing board at Huawei, said Africa has an advantage due to its young population and size of its potential skills pool.
“Africa is home to one fourth of the world’s youth, making it the world’s youngest continent. Young people are adapting quickly to digital transformation,” said Wang.
He added that AI and GenAI applications is driving business growth and that is why Huawei has invested $156 billion to R&D over the last decade.
“For the past three years we have reinvested over 20% of our annual revenue in R&D. This ongoing investment has helped us lead the industry, focused on networks, security, computing and cloud.”
Sub-Sahara growth
Wang said that over the past twenty years, Huawei has helped businesses in Sub-Saharan Africa go digital, serving over 500 customers in government, finance, electric power, and oil sectors.
He referred to the implementation of the ‘one country, one cloud, one network’ digital partner delivery model to help drive digital transformation in key industries.
The government is a strong example of what can be achieved by applying the model, said Wang. “The application of this model has resulted in the connection of one thousand government colonies and migrating more 500 business applications to the cloud.”
He said the company will continue investing in innovation in Sub-Saharan Africa and has established four joint innovation centres. Huawei views South Africa as a key market and has a strong presence in Gauteng.
Gov’t buy-in
Gauteng premier Panyaza Lesufi attended the Huawei Africa Connect conference and said that South Africa’s government of national unity (GNU) will continue to embrace a proactive approach to digital transformation and technology innovation, with particular focus on collaboration with companies like Huawei.
Lesufi said government is focused on driving ICT to accelerate connectivity, with specific attention to the role of AI, GenAI, data management and the cloud.
He stressed that a new administration will not impact or change existing policies regarding ICT services.
“There will be no policy change or policy shift … the GNU will accelerate policy implementation rather than a policy shift. To us this is very important...to ensure that we only work with you in a manner that will bring change and service delivery to our communities.”
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