• Huawei South Africa and the Department of Communications and Digital Technologies have announced a partnership that will focus on two key areas locally.
• The first is enhancing broadband deployment as a foundation for a digital economy.
• The second is providing digital skills training for South African SMEs.

In recent months we have seen Huawei South Africa look to strengthen its ties to key departments within the South African government, with one of the more recent initiatives being a partnership with the Department of Communications and Digital Technologies (DCDT).

The pair will be partnering on two projects in particular, Huawei South Africa confirmed.

Namely on programmes aimed at enhancing broadband deployment as a foundation for a digital economy and providing digital skills training for SMMEs.

“They additionally form part of a wider cooperation agreement between the two parties that was signed earlier this month, and which will see Huawei share global best practices for the planning of digital economy policies and technology rollouts, among other things. Africa Analysis and Digital Council Africa are also stakeholders in the broadband pact,” the company outlined in a press release sent to Hypertext.

Looking specifically at the skills development element of the partnership, DCDT and Huawei are cooperating to carry out an SMME Digital Skill Transformation Programme.

This programme seeks to empower South African SMEs with ICT technologies and help them to continue their development within the country’s digital economy.

“We have already trained more than 200 trainees from SMMEs in our partnership with the DCDT, drawing from its database. Given that we are in Women’s Month, we sought to combine our annual Women in Tech digital skills training for women entrepreneurs and invited women business owners to join this session. We hope that they will benefit greatly from the training and start embracing technologies like high-speed fibre or 5G and look into the benefits of Cloud for SMMEs,” added Huawei South Africa CEO, Will Meng.

“Both Huawei and the DCDT are optimistic about the future of the country’s digital transformation process and our partnership agreement will greatly assist in ensuring that ICT technology drives the economy forward, taking every citizen with it,” he concluded.

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