The South African government needs to strengthen its role in the execution of ICT and telecommunications policies and initiatives if the country is to truly benefit from the 'digital tsunami' heading its way.

This is according to Steven Wu, CEO of Huawei Technologies South Africa, who in an exclusive interview with ITWeb Africa ahead of the Vision 2030 Summit in Johannesburg beginning 21 June, said despite the country's challenges, he expects a vibrant ICT sector to emerge and the company will continue to build on its investment trajectory.

Huawei SA will attend the Summit and will also use the opportunity to present its Global Connectivity Index (GCI), an extensive research into progress of 50 nations in terms of their digital transformation.

The GCI showed that South Africa has performed at average levels in terms of broadband, data centres and cloud services. However, its Fibre to the Home and fixed broadband fell severely behind.

"With this report and our own research, we believe South Africa is a leading country on the Index for Africa... Huawei entered the market in 1998 and we have been here for almost 20 years. From the report and our experience, South Africa ranks in thirty-first position and is still far behind leading countries - especially in rural broadband infrastructure. Today, the fixed broadband penetration is still less than fifteen percent, that is a very low digit – even in the urban areas, the signal and quality of the broadband service is still not good enough."

The broadband infrastructure challenge is one that is preventing society from enjoying the digital transformation, says Wu.

To effectively address this challenge requires quality technology implementation and investment, as well as collaboration between key stakeholders, including operators and the government, according to Wu.

"In the past years operators like Telkom and MTN, have increased investment in broadband infrastructure, especially 4G and Fibre-to-Home ... we encourage operators and government to continue to invest in those areas, because we believe that broadband will be the basic of the digital society ... without broadband all other applications, like safe cities, smart cities, e-education and e-government, will not be possible."

At the same time Wu has urged government to accelerate the rollout of the South Africa Connect project, which he says is planned for some time this year. "In a broadband society, both government and the private sector can play very important roles, not only private sectors. For the rural areas, for regulation and infrastructure, and connectivity, government should play a more important role. We are glad to see that government has realised that broadband infrastructure is becoming more and more important. "

Despite positive developments like SA Connect, e-government, etc. the country's government can do more says Wu. "ICT will become the engine of the country, of society and enabler of social life within the fourth revolution, the digital revolution."

Body to coordinate stakeholders

This realisation of the significance of the ICT strategy has facilitated the introduction of digital society development committees, the national ICT forum and related initiatives/ e-projects says Wu.

"All of this sends a good signal to the market. But, from another point of view, we do believe that those policies and those planning will become more important in digital transformation, especially in economic development... I think that execution is key. To execute those policies in a short time is key to leverage the development. We also know that execution is not easy and needs collaboration between government, private sectors and between different departments and local municipalities. We need a strong organisation to coordinate all stakeholders to make execution happen as soon as possible."

Wu believes South Africa can learn from markets like China which he says developed broadband strategies 20 years ago and this was followed up diligently by the government to ensure the effective application of digital technology and that it adequately addressed connectivity issues.

However, he concedes that a country like South Africa is faced with the pressing issue of technical skills availability, overall efficiency of society and costs related to connectivity, along with economic challenges.

Huawei has established regional training and innovation centres, as well as OpenLabs as part of its contribution to the local skills transfer ecosystem.

In cooperation with its enterprise and government partners, the multinational ICT firm has committed to increase its current level of freely training 2000 ICT engineers every five years by an additional 3000.

Wu feels the gap between South Africa and leading regions on the Index represents an opportunity for the African country to focus and try to fill it as quickly as possible.

"I am very confident that the future of the South African ICT domain will be brilliant... Huawei will continually invest in this country and this continent. The digital tsunami is coming sooner and harder, so we should be ready for this digital transformation."