Huawei, Smart Africa drive continent’s digital transformation

Huawei, yesterday, informed that it had joined the Smart Africa Alliance as Information and Communications Technologies advisor and Platinum member at the Smart Africa Board Meeting.

According to it, the partnership with Smart Africa is one of Huawei’s efforts to drive digital transformation in Africa.

The SAA is an innovative commitment from African heads of state and government to accelerate sustainable socio-economic development on the continent, ushering Africa into a knowledge economy through affordable access to broadband and usage of ICTs.

The President of Rwanda, Paul Kagame, said that the Smart Africa manifesto, the foundation of the initiative, was based on five principles.

According to Kagame, the five principles are: To put ICT at the center of our national socio-economic development agenda; to improve access to ICT especially broadband; to improve accountability, efficiency, and openness through ICT; to put the private sector first; and to leverage ICT to promote sustainable development.

The Executive Director of Smart Africa Secretariat, Dr. Hamadoun Toure, extended a welcome to Huawei, saying, “One of the key objectives of the Smart Africa initiative is to strengthen the public-private collaboration to accelerate the ICT development in Africa.”

He said, “As a global leading ICT solutions provider, Huawei has been continuously making significant contributions to provide telecom connectivity, especially broadband connections to Africa, giving African people access to affordable broadband network.

“We are more than happy that Huawei has joined us to partner with African governments, the International Telecommunications Union, the Global System for Mobile Application, the World Bank, and all the other Smart Africa members, to transform Africa through ICTs. We believe Huawei’s expertise and experience will promote African countries’ digital economy and improve their global competitiveness.”