Huawei Monday demonstrated its commitment to Africa’s energy transition, while also showcasing the full range of its latest solar PV and green home and business solutions, at the Solar Power Africa Conference in Cape Town, South Africa.

In his keynote address to the conference attendees, Xia Hesheng, President of Huawei Digital Power Sub-Saharan Africa Region, pointed out that “Carbon Neutrality” has become a global consensus. Low carbonisation, digitalisation and intelligence will definitely be a deterministic trend in the next 30 or 40 years.

However, digitalisation and intelligence are all supported by computing power that consumes a huge amount of electricity, which is now driving the urgency for the development of clean energy.

And, solar as the main renewable energy, driven by three key factors; low carbon, digitalisation and intelligence, is growing rapidly. Renewable energy will therefore become the main energy resource. 

Hesheng expanded that Africa urgently needs solar energy to address its energy shortage challenges. “Worsening load shedding and rising energy costs are seriously impacting our lives, productivity, and ability to engage meaningfully in economic activity,” he said.    

“Huawei believes that what it calls “4T” Technologies, will drive the development of Africa’s renewable energy: watT, heaT, baTtery and biT. Over its 25 years of operating in Sub Sahran Africa, Huawei has a deep understanding of the region’s energy and technology requirements. We are committed to utilise Huawei's digital power energy technologies to build a better Africa and bring clean energy to more people, families, and organisations,” continued Hesheng. 

Huawei called on every organisation to take action to transform from energy consumers to energy producers. 

Xia illustrated how Huawei itself is doing so, using two examples from its work in South Africa. The first is Huawei's Johannesburg campus, where all 18 buildings and parking garages are covered with solar panels, supporting a solar system which provides 1500KWh/day.

Another example, is the Waterkloof Winery in Cape Town, where Huawei has worked with a local partner, to provide a clean energy solution. A cluster of solar panels on the winery's roof generates 1100KWh/Day of green electricity to the winery. 

“We are happy to see that more enterprises, organisations, and families are actively taking action to change from pure energy consumers to energy producers. We want to use this occasion to call on more stakeholders to join us in this great transformation, let’s use our abundant natural resource, sunshine, to address today's energy challenges, and in so doing, contribute to a carbon-neutral future,” concluded Hesheng.

Together, from Energy Consumers to Energy Producers, we can build a green Africa.

Huawei, a leading ICT global solutions provider has announced the results of the 2021-2022 Huawei global ICT competition Sub Saharan Africa.

Under the theme of “Connection, Glory, Future”, the nine month long Huawei ICT competition for Sub Saharan Africa was finalized on 19th February, with over 16 countries and 38 teams sitting for written and laboratory exams. The competition attracted over 15,000 participants from Sub-Saharan Africa from 500 universities. 

Globally the Huawei ICT Competition 2021 covered over 80 countries worldwide, with 150 000 contestants from more than 2,000 universities and colleges. Launched in the African region just six years ago, the Huawei ICT Competition has developed into the largest ICT skills competition in Africa and the world atlarge.

Team Uganda was represented by Makerere University which took 12 students and Muni University which took three students out of the 750 students that registered in 2021. Three students from Makerere took first position and then the other six from Makerere and Muni took second position respectively. These shall now proceed to the global finals in China to compete at global level in May this year.

According to the Huawei Uganda Public Relations Director, Mr Gaojian, “Huawei Uganda approached over 15 universities and interested them in the 2021 ICT Competition. We registered 750 students and opened for them our free online learning platforms in the various courses of Network and cloud. The network track consists of Datacom, Security and Wireless Lan while Cloud track consists of Artificial intelligence, Big Data, Cloud Computing and Storage. These studied and were subjected to preliminary exams, national exams and Regional exams where we attained the first and second position.”

Michelle Chemutai, a telecom engineer, at Makerere University and one of the winners expressed her gratitude to the exposure Huawei had accorded to them.

“The competition was very intimidating and at the same time exciting. The thought of competing with creme de la creme teams from different countries was frightening. Taking the first position made me really feel good about myself and increased my self-confidence. Thanks to Huawei,” she said.

She added that, “This competition was a new experience for me as an individual. it taught me team work and coordination and that hard work actually pays off. This competition literally forced us to give in our best. Also, I got a lot of exposure in the network field and learnt how to do the practical lab configurations that isn't taught at the university.”

With a series of talent ecosystem campaigns in Sub Saharan Africa, including the ICT competition, Huawei hopes to skill up more than 700,000 ICT professionals by 2023.

Authorities in the US are investigating Chinese telecom firm ZTE over bribery allegations, media reports quoting sources reveal.

The new investigations by US's Justice Department 'centers on possible bribes ZTE paid to foreign officials to gain advantages in its worldwide operations.'

Three years ago, ZTE 'pleaded guilty to violating U.S. sanctions against Iran and North Korea.'

According to NBC News, the fresh scrutiny on ZTE comes just after the end of the corporate probation period agreed to under the March 2017 plea agreement it struck with the Justice Department. "Under the agreement, ZTE agreed to a civil and criminal penalty and forfeiture of $1.19 billion,"

While ZTE's headquarters are in Shenzhen, Guangdong, China, it runs a subsidiary in Richardson, Texas where it relies on U.S.-made materials for smartphones and computer networking gear.

Under the 2017 agreement with the Justice Department, ZTE agreed to implement and maintain a compliance and ethics program to detect violations of sanctions and export controls.

Implementing the programs did not give ZTE immunity for any past crimes the company had not disclosed to the U.S. government when the plea agreement was signed, the documents show.

ZTE's code of conduct bars employees from paying or accepting bribes in China or abroad, documents show. But news reports, documents and at least one lawsuit filed in recent years have accused ZTE of corruption in more than a dozen countries, including Algeria, Liberia, Kenya and Zimbabwe.

In Kenya, for example, a document published by WikiLeaks in 2010 raises questions about how ZTE won a 2009 contract to install landline telephone monitoring equipment for the country's National Intelligence Service.

What appears to be a report from then-U.S. Ambassador Michael Ranneberger to the State Department states that ZTE received the contract after paying kickbacks to high-level officials of the National Intelligence Service (then known as the National Security Intelligence Service), including one who received $5,000 a month, which he used to pay medical bills.

In a statement, a representative of ZTE said ZTE is fully committed to meeting its legal and compliance obligations. "The top priority of the company's leadership team is making ZTE a trusted and reliable business partner in the global marketplace, and the company is proud of the enormous progress it has made. Beyond this, it would not be appropriate for ZTE to comment."