Delegates at the Huawei LEAP Summit 2024 at MWC Shanghai in China.

Huawei recently launched a new initiative to train an additional 150,000 people in Sub-Saharan Africa over the next three years.

The plan comes on top of the ICT company’s initial goal to equip over 100,000 people in the region with digital skills by 2025.

Huawei says it has already exceeded its initial goal by 120%, 10 months ahead of schedule, training over 120,000 individuals over the past 26 months.

Both announcements were made at the LEAP Summit 2024: ICT Talent and Sustainable Development for Sub-Saharan Africa.

LEAP stands for leadership, employability, advancement and possibility. The event, co-hosted by Huawei and the African Telecommunications Union (ATU), is an official partner program of Mobile World Congress Shanghai 2024.

Huawei and ATU gathered over 200 guests for the LEAP Summit 2024. Among them were high ranking ministers, ambassadors and other government officials from many African nations in the Sub-Saharan region

The strategy builds on the ICT leader's initial objective of equipping over 100,000 people in the region with digital skills by 2025.

The World Economic Forum estimates that more than one billion individuals worldwide would need to be upskilled or reskilled by 2030.

Furthermore, the International Financial Corporation predicts that more than 230 million jobs in Sub-Saharan Africa will require digital skills by 2030.

In this introductory talk, Jeff Wang, senior vice president and President of Public Affairs and Communications at Huawei, described the company's strategy to inclusive, methodical, and future-oriented workforce development. "Huawei launched the LEAP Digital Talent Development Programme in Sub-Saharan Africa in 2022."

Commenting on LEAP thus far, Hover Gao, President of Sub-Saharan Africa, Huawei, said: “We have made much positive progress in talent development across African countries, but this would not have been possible without the joint efforts of government agencies, academia, and industry.”

In his speech, ATU Secretary General John OMO stated that "digital skills development and access to ICT is not about ICT, but about people." It is about enabling people to engage fully in the digital economy."