n Staff Reporter 

CAPE TOWN –There is critical shortage of skilled ICT professionals in Sub-Saharan Africa, which hampers the growth of a thriving ICT sector, which underpins economic growth.  To address this skills shortage, Huawei launched an ICT Talent Ecosystem Programme in Sub-Saharan Africa at Africacom 2018 - the largest telecommunications event in Africa, being held Cape Town. 

Huawei has partnered with UNESCO – the United Nations agency for Education, Science and Culture, African universities and industry to cultivate local ICT information and communications technology (ICT) talent and develop a sustainable ICT ecosystem. 

As part of this ecosystem, Huawei carries out several ICT certification programmes including the Huawei ICT Academy and Huawei Authorised Learning Partner (“HALP”) for university students and industry practitioners, providing industry recognized certification HCNA, HCNP, HCIE, across extensive ICT technologies, such as Routing & Switching, Storage, Cloud Computing, Security, etc.

In addition, Huawei also organises events including an ICT Competition and Career Expos for tertiary students in order to promote a greater understanding of and interest in ICT related job opportunities.
“We are launching this platform to demonstrate that the young talent in Sub-Sahara Africa have the potential to mature into world-class experts. Today, we re-dedicate ourselves to working even more closely with partners across the continent to better equip the next generation of technology leaders. 

By enhancing industry-academic cooperation, we, as an international ICT company, hope to make our contribution to achieving of the continent’s development goals,” said Michael Meng, Services Director of the Huawei Enterprise Business Group for the Southern African region.

Huawei launched the 2018 ICT competition in June in more than 10 Sub-Saharan African countries, including South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya and Zambia. Under the slogan of “Connection Glory Future”, this event has attracted more than 20,000 participants. This figure has increased from 1,000 back in 2017. Winners of the contest in various African counties will have the opportunity to participate in the regional finals to be held in South Africa. The winners will move on to the global finals to be held at Huawei’s headquarters in Shenzhen, China. 

Huawei is a leading global provider of ICT infrastructure and smart devices. With integrated solutions across four key domains – telecom networks, IT, smart devices, and cloud services – we are committed to bringing digital to every person, home and organisation for a fully connected, intelligent world. 

Huawei’s end-to-end portfolio of products, solutions and services are both competitive and secure. Through open collaboration with ecosystem partners, we create lasting value for our customers, working to empower people, enrich home life, and inspire innovation in organizations of all shapes and sizes. 
At Huawei, innovation focuses on customer needs. We invest heavily in basic research, concentrating on technological breakthroughs that drive the world forward. We have more than 180,000 employees, and we operate in more than 170 countries and regions. Founded in 1987, Huawei is a private company fully owned by its employees.