Over the next five years, 1 000 students across Africa will join multinational telecommunication company Huawei’s Seeds for the Future technical training programme in order to help build information and communication technology (ICT) capabilities in Africa.
Making the announcement during the World Economic Forum on Africa 2015, held in Cape Town earlier this month, Huawei senior VP Charles Ding said governments in Africa needed to develop a vision to boost connections.
“They need to invest or facilitate investments into national broadband plans and train technical talent; this will create jobs, boost growth and secure Africa’s future,” he said.
Moreover, Huawei works with governments and universities globally to send students overseas to provide work experience with globally credible ICT equipment.
To date, more than 10 000 students globally have benefited from the Seeds for the Future programme. As a result, Ding indicated, Africa would join this ICT talent cultivation programme through the one-thousand students who would be trained.
He also mentioned that there was a need for collaboration between Huawei and African countries to build a national broadband in Africa. Ding pointed out that Huawei’s experience in building some of the most innovative national broadband networks globally could benefit many countries in Africa.
“To build a better-connected Africa, govern-ments, private sectors and all related stakeholders from the telecoms ecosystem have to work together,” he emphasised.
Currently, Huawei employs 170 000 people globally who deal with an end-to-end ICT solutions portfolio that provides customers with competitive advantages in telecoms and enterprise networks, devices and cloud computing. The company aims to be an innovative enabler for the information society and a collaborative contributor to the industry.
Huawei’s products, services and solutions are used in more than 170 countries and serve more than one-third of the world’s population.