By: Dwight Links
Huawei Southern Africa vice-president, Hannah Hanxu, indicated that the ICT sector is still the largest disruptor sector in that it helps to modify other sectors in their functions.
“Think of ICT as a younger sibling against the other older siblings, which are the other industries and sectors. These can be from mining to education,” Hanxu indicated at the recent Huawei ICT Congress held in Windhoek.
The event hosted various government and parastatal representatives with the aim of showcasing what the next solutions are for the various public and commercial sectors.
Huawei noted that they focus on three areas of service provision: consumer electronics and services, government, and enterprise solutions.
The aim, according to Hanxu, is to support and partner up with these main actors in the economy.
From these three branches, Hanxu indicated that there are six pillars that Huawei identifies for market needs, such as automotive developments, which provide solutions to consumers.
“Intelligent automotive solutions are our next focus as we see car manufacturers providing automotive solutions. We intend to be the Intel for a laptop, so we wish to be the same for electric vehicles,” Hanxu explained.
She added that they work with numerous car manufacturers to expand intelligent driving, intelligent vehicle cloud services, and intelligent vehicle control.
One ambition of the company would be to bring autonomous driving to the global vehicle market.
TECHNOLOGY FRONTIERS
Hanxu added that they have extensive experience in helping Namibian operators like MTC introduce the various generations of communication technology. With the current level combining 4G and 5G capabilities.
“Cloud networks have also been implemented in the country and globally. Another new solution would be computing – many people think this only applies to your personal computer or laptop, but these are the possibilities that AI computing offer,” she highlighted.
The ICT company indicated that they are the only hyperscalers on the continent. Splitting the continent into two halves, northern and southern Africa, each is positioned to meet demands.
Hyperscaling is when the architecture of the technology is developed so as to meet future demands when the need arises.
Hanxu noted that since the Green Industries Council, which was recently constituted, her corporation can play a part in the sector.
With many innovations happening in the renewable energy solutions in the country, smart photovoltaic technology can be availed in the country.
Data centre development has been taking place all across southern Africa as Huawei developed projects in Zambia, Malawi, Angola, and South Africa.
At the ICT conference, Huawei proposed that Namibia taps into most of the mentioned developments, specifically with the aim of developing the country’s digital infrastructure.
“This would allow the rollout of the technology to reach more Namibians across the country, thus eliminating the digital and technology divide,” Hanxu pointed out.
The telecommunications partners of the technology giant reach close to 80% of the population, with more developments required for optimum connectivity to be achieved in the country.
With a global reach of 213,000 employees over most continents in the world, most of the efforts of the company are in Research & Development, with more than half of these employees in that department.
In Namibia, the company has a staff of more than 50.
