Huawei Calls for Building a Better Connected World to Promote Digital Entrepreneurship in Africa
At the 26th World Economic Forum on Africa, Huawei shared its vision and insights on the development of the digital economy of Africa.
From 11th to 13th of May 2016, Huawei attended the Forum as a partner for the third time. During the session of New Solutions: Digital Entrepreneurship, Charles Ding, Vice President of Huawei, called for building a better connected world to Promote Digital Entrepreneurship in Africa. “Well-improved ICT infrastructure, reliable broadband network, and good-quality smart devices are the basic foundation of the development of digital entrepreneurs. With this foundation, innovative ICT technologies will revolutionise every industry and bring more opportunities to digital entrepreneurs in Africa,” said Ding.
Charles Ding also shared the case of the Safe City solution deployed by Huawei and the government of Kenya to illustrate how ICT technologies bring safety and convenience to people. The Safe City solution includes the response alarm system, broadband cluster eLTE, video surveillance, intelligence analysis (license plate recognition, violation detection), etc, providing police with better situational awareness and early warning of public accidents, from the occurrence to the end, so that the police can be able to have full coupling control and scheduling. In 2015, the system ensured the security during the Pope’s visit to Kenya, where more than 300,000 visitors attended the event. After the deployment of Safe City solution, the local security situation has been significantly improved. Kenyan police department's annual report showed that in 2015, the city of peace in the region covered by the project, the crime rate dropped by 46%.
Another speaker at the session, Cina Lawson, Minister of Posts and Digital Economy of Togo emphasised the importance of ICT infrastructure and said that the government of Togo is working with Huawei on a broadband network project to improve the broadband network penetration of Togo.
At a side event of the Forum, Eman Liu, President of Enterprise Business Huawei in Eastern and Southern Africa Region, announced that Huawei is looking into expanding safe city solutions in others African countries to provide a safer environment for the development of digital economy in Africa.
