Huawei deepens commitment
to digital South Africa

Huawei is embedding itself into the foundations of a digital economy the country hopes will drive inclusive growth, social cohesion and global competitiveness. At its flagship South Africa Connect 2025 summit in Sandton on Thursday, the Chinese technology giant made clear that this country was one of its key markets.

Gene Zhang, CEO of Huawei South Africa’s enterprise business group, opened the summit with a blueprint for national-scale enablement.

 “We are supporting digital infrastructure, deeply understanding industry needs, offering tailored solutions, and contributing to the local innovation ecosystem, so that everyone can benefit from the intelligent era,” he said. 

Zhang pointed to the scale already achieved: more than 640 networks built, 150 data centres deployed, and 210 petabytes of storage capacity rolled out. “We now work with over 1,000 ecosystem partners and serve 300 customers through Huawei Cloud.”

A new emphasis on AI is now at the fore of its initiatives.

“The new wave of AI is here,” said Zhang. “AI is emerging as the main driving force of digital and intelligent productivity across all sectors.” 

He cited the accuracy of AI models increasing by 91.5%, while costs have fallen by 99.3% since 2022. Yet, local adoption is constrained by cloud limitations, under-utilised data, and a shortage of computing power and talent. Huawei’s strategy in South Africa is to provide the digital spine – infrastructure, cloud platforms, data tools, and industry-specific solutions – across what it says are already 1,000 applied scenarios.

Huawei Sub-Saharan Africa CEO Will Meng echoed this shift from supply to partnership. 

“Huawei has partnered with South Africa for over two decades,” he said. Our role goes beyond providing technology; we aim to be a strategic partner for national development, helping to build secure, scalable, and future-ready digital infrastructure.”

Minister of Communications and Digital Technologies Solly Malatsi welcomed this positioning in an address at the event. He thanked the company “for always stepping up when I’ve called on them to support our efforts to expand access to smart devices”.

Malatsi framed the government’s strategy around four measurable priorities.

“First, we are working towards achieving 100% connectivity in South Africa by 2029. Second, we’re investing in digital skills. Through the national Digital and Future Skills Strategy, our aim is to empower 70% of the population with basic digital skills by 2029.

“Thirdly, we are promoting the productive use of digital technologies to ensure connectivity translates into real opportunity. And finally, we are determined to make South Africa the most attractive destination for ICT investment on the continent. That means providing policy certainty, reforming procurement systems, while upholding our national transformation goals.”

The goals of the country’s Digital Transformation Roadmap, he said, “are not just technical upgrades – they are people-centred solutions that can be life-changing”.

Hong-Eng Koh, Huawei’s Singapore-based global chief scientist for public safety, said the transformation journey had to form part of a six-step journey.

“First, governance. You need the right laws and policy organisation. It has to be top-down driven. 

“Secondly, the digital culture. You need to do the change management. You need to do the re-skilling, up-skilling. You need a lot of data scientists. And (third), the digital infrastructure… from connectivity to data centre, to cloud, to AI. 

“Fourth is the actual digital services. Next is the ecosystem. Last but not least, the transformation journey must be sustainable.”

* Arthur Goldstuck is CEO of World Wide Worx, editor-in-Chief of Gadget.co.za and author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to AI. This story first appeared in The Sunday Times.