by AZREEN HANI

HUAWEI Technologies Co Ltd pledges stronger support for Asia-Pacific (APAC) digital development ecosystem, as the region sets to become a digital economic powerhouse by 2025.

Huawei’s rotating chairman Ken Hu (picture) said in 2022 the company will increase its support for a green and digital APAC by promoting digital infrastructure, low-carbon development and digital inclusion.

“Moving forward, we will keep investing heavily in innovation to help our partners in the region meet their strategic development goals,” he said in his speech at the Huawei APAC Digital Innovation Congress 2022 in Singapore yesterday.

In APAC, the Chinese technology company has established partnerships with nearly 10,000 enterprise and cloud partners and plans to invest US$100 million (RM439.73 million) in the Spark start-up ecosystem.

Together with its partners, Huawei has trained 170,000 locals on digital skills, and plans to provide digital training to another 500,000 within five years as part of its efforts to develop a talent ecosystem that can drive the digital economy forward.

“By 2030, APAC’s workforce is estimated to reach 2.2 billion people and compared to other regions, this workforce will be relatively young. This is an important advantage, and we should invest more in the next generation of digital talent,” Hu said.

Expressing similar sentiment, Asean Foundation ED Yang Mee Eng stressed that only a strong digital talent team can achieve an inclusive and resilient digital APAC region.

“The Huawei APAC Digital Innovation Congress 2022 marks another critical milestone in the Asean Foundation-Huawei partnership to continue creating a talent development-focused learning ecosystem that will help address the digital skill shortage in the region,” she said in her speech.

In Malaysia, Science, Technology and Innovation Minister Datuk Seri Dr Adham Baba said that Mimos Bhd has partnered with Huawei Malaysia via the Digital Transformation Programme, which focuses on the development of curriculum and course programmes for 5G technology.

“Through the partnership of Mimos, Maxis Bhd and Huawei Malaysia, the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Innovation Hub, a facility equipped with 5G network infrastructure and AI instruments, has been established to accelerate the creation of industrial use-cases enabled by 5G, AI and other advanced technologies,” he said, adding that Malaysia is open to forge partnerships with global firms on digitalisation aspect.

Asean Economic Community deputy secretary general Satvinder Singh said since the pandemic started, 60 million new digital consumers have been added, making Asean the third largest Internet base with nearly 400 million Internet users.

He informed that Asean digital revenue is expected to hit US$363 billion by 2025.

“Digital transformation requires stronger coordinated actions from multiple stakeholders, including the private sector to realise the full potential of digital transformations in Asean,” he said.

A panel discussion was also held during the event, with participants including the director of the Asia Competitiveness Institute at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy of the National University of Singapore Prof Paul Cheung; Unesco Regional Science Bureau for Asia and the Pacific director Mohamed Djelid; Mimos president and CEO Dr Iskandar Samad; and Huawei Asia Pacific Strategy and Marketing president David Lu.

The panellists concluded that a thriving and sustainable digital APAC depends on effective top-level strategic plannings, favourable industrial policies, solid digital infrastructure, wide adoption of digital applications and a strong digital talent ecosystem.