Huawei launches first Innovation & Experience Center in Africa
Many Foreign countries are venturing and investing in Africa, Huawei one of the Leading mobile manufactures has launched Africa’s first Huawei Innovation & Experience Center, and signed a Cooperation Contact with the Department of Telecommunications and Postal Service (DTPS). The centre is set to be the cornerstone of an innovative revolution in the local ICT sector and will showcase futuristic products and solutions across the Carrier, Enterprise and Consumer Business Groups.
The Huawei Innovation & Experience Center is a platform for industry players to explore what the ICT world has in store allowing them an experience of what is available in the developed world and what is to come. Huawei’s President of the East and Southern Africa Region, Mr. Li Peng said, “It is very exciting for us as industry leaders to provide a community environment for big players such as carriers to witness the potential of our offerings, and for SMME’s to gain opportunities to share their ideas in spaces like gaming, video, and APP development etc; where they can test and advance their solutions and gain exposure to various partnership opportunities.”
The DTPS endorsed centre is another milestone achieved through strategic relations between Huawei and the department, aimed at enhancing local ICT skills, job creation, and the bigger scope of securing South Africa’s position as Africa’s ICT hub. The Minister of the DTPS, Siyabonga Cwele said, “We thank Huawei for their contribution to South Africa, we are very excited to be part of this innovative platform that Huawei has created to give a feel of the potential we have as a sector and the goals we are working towards. The Cooperation Contract signed between us is a start of bigger things to happen in the industry, and it is through such partnerships between the public and private sectors that we can achieve a better connected South Africa.” The Chinese ambassador, Mr. Tian Xuejun also praised Huawei by highlighting, “The seed from last year’s FOCAC is being harvested, ICT is truly the driving tool of any economies development. The Chinese government always encourages excellent enterprises from China, like Huawei to work closely with South Africa to a achieve a win-win result.”
Huawei South Africa has invested more than 72 million Rands into the Innovation Centre to equip the centre with 5G/4.5G wireless communication technologies, Video( VR, 4K Video, Mobile Video), Smart Home solutions, Safe City solutions, Smart Metro solutions, Mobile Money Solution, VoLTE & VoWiFi, Transmission, IoT / NB-IoT, Cloud Service, Data Center, Smartphones and wearable devices amongst other technologies. It will also serve as an open lab to South African institutions of higher learning (UJ, VUT,TUT,DUT).
The agreement signed revolves around 3 key areas: capacity building, the joint Innovation Centre and ICT talent training. The Innovation centre will serve as an exhibition of Huawei Solutions, an open lab to university students, an incubation centre for upcoming ICT enterprises and much more. Huawei will also work closely with the DTPS to fulfill the target of 1000 ICT talents trained by Huawei by 2021. Huawei has planned to launch 10 global Innovation Centres, so far there are 6 operational Innovation Centres and this will be the 7th. Other centres are in Shenzhen (China), London (UK), Dusseldorf (German), Moscow (Russia), Warsaw (Poland), and Sao. Paulo (Brazil).
Sources ITnesAfrica.
