After two years of virtual meetings, the prestigious annual Africa Com event, one of the largest technology conferences in Africa, returned in person this year. Taking place at the Cape Town International Conference Center (CTICC) from November 7-11, the event brought together African operators, industry elites and thought leaders. As a leading player in the industry, Huawei had a strong presence at the event. With the theme “Lighting Up the Future,” he shared insights into cutting-edge trends in the telecom industry, including 4G/5G joint development, FMC’s intelligent connectivity, digital operations transformation, and green development, leading the future of digital networks in Africa. .
During the opening session of the conference, Leo Chen, President of Huawei’s Sub-Saharan Africa Region, gave a presentation called “Brightening the Future with Continuous Innovation”, where he described Huawei’s latest ICT development concepts and successful solutions. of digital transformation.
“The high resilience and rapid growth of the continent’s digital economy, technologies such as 5G, artificial intelligence and cloud are rapidly evolving, and ICT adoption in a wide range of industries is growing,” Chen said. “They are supporting Africa in advancing the technical revolution, boosting productivity and increasing jobs.”
He noted that over the past two decades, Africa has made significant progress in digitization. He has established the infrastructure of the first mile, connecting countries of the continent to the Internet. In addition, it has tripled its half-mile internet infrastructure that expands the connection within and between countries. However, there are still challenges to overcome.
“We still need to improve last-mile broadband infrastructure and bridge the digital divide between urban and rural areas,” Chen said.
While there is an appetite for further adoption of digital technologies, constraints, including skills gaps and a lack of viable technology solutions, are holding ICT adoption back. Chen pointed out that there are three main ways to overcome these bottlenecks:
- Further deepen connectivity to connect more people, businesses and scenarios;
- Unleash digital productivity and enable digital transformation across multiple industries; Y
- Increase the energy efficiency of the ICT industry and harness ICT technologies to reduce emissions in all industries.
Of particular relevance to the African context were the case studies on the digital transformation of the port and mining sectors in China that have attracted the attention of their African counterparts. These case studies provide a good example and reference for the development potential of the digital economy in Africa. About 90% of Africa’s imports and exports travel by sea, and mining is a major source of wealth creation for many African countries.
As Africa’s digital ship sails into the future, it requires a strong tailwind to propel it forward. Chen called for more favorable industrial policies and more cooperation between the public and private sectors. To this end, Huawei has established four innovation centers in Africa, launched various plans to support the development of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), and will train 100,000 digital champions in Africa over the next three years.
Huawei showcased a range of innovative technologies and solutions at Africa Com 2022, including Very Large Scale Antenna Array (ELAA) and solutions such as Ultra-Wideband RRU, which effectively and cost-effectively address some of the obstacles such as inconsistent spectrum resources and range. Insufficient fiber optic network.
For more information, visit Huawei.
