Boosting digital infrastructure, maximising the use of cloud, and focusing on partnerships and skills development will help Africa’s ICT ecosystem eradicate barriers in digital transformation.

This is one of the key take-away discussion points raised at Huawei Connect Dubai, hosted recently in the United Arab Emirates.

The event was centred on the theme Innovative Infrastructure to Unleash Digital.

Representatives from Egypt's Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research, Nigeria's Galaxy Backbone Limited and Huawei shared their latest digitalisation practices, exploring new paths to industrial digital transformation.

Ken Hu, Huawei's Rotating Chairman, delivered a keynote which outlined the strategy that Africa’s ICT ecosystem could use to break through common barriers in digital transformation, which includes:

• Boost digital infrastructure, including more robust connectivity and stronger, more diverse computing resources.
• Help organisations go beyond simple cloud adoption and truly make the most of cloud, focusing on advanced technology services that drive leapfrog development.
• Build out local digital ecosystems including partner development, strengthening the digital talent pool, and providing more support for SMEs.

Empower Program launched

At the event, Huawei launched the Huawei Empower Program, which aims to help develop a thriving digital ecosystem for global partners. The company has committed to invest US$300-million into the program over the next three years.

According to the company, through this program, it will conduct joint innovation with its partners via OpenLabs, empower partners with a new framework, a new plan, and an integrated platform, and create a talent pool through the Huawei ICT Academy and Huawei Authorised Learning Partner (HALP) programs.

Bob Chen, Vice President of Huawei Enterprise BG, discussed how multi-tech synergy is critical for finding the right technology for the right scenario.

He said data is at the core of digital transformation, “and data ingestion, transmission, storage, and analysis are key steps. Huawei provides full-stack products and product portfolios to support end-to-end data processing, accelerating customers' digital transformation."

Joy Huang, President of Huawei Cloud Strategy & Industry Development, pointed out that Huawei's approach to digital transformation has three pillars: greener infrastructure, ongoing innovation, and shared experience.

Huawei Cloud aims to be the best digitalisation partner for customers, and is working with partners and customers to unleash digital with Everything as a Service.

Dr Hesham Farouk Ali, Egypt's Assistant Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research, said that ICT would make education more people-centric and accelerate the transformation of both teaching and learning methods. Huawei's expertise in education and research networks, cloud, and AI is providing key support and laying groundwork for the digitalisation of higher education in Egypt.