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Huawei Technologies will invest $300 million (Sh30 billion) in building a stronger foundation for the industrial digital transformation of Africa and the Middle East regions.

Speaking the Huawei Dubai Connect, Steve Yi, Huawei President of the Africa and Middle East Region, announced that the plan is part of its strategy to explore new pathways to advance the region’s industrial digital transformation.

The event is an industry meeting for more than 3,000 stakeholders from the region.

At the event, Huawei launched its Empower Program, which aims to help develop a thriving digital ecosystem for global partners. Through this program, the firm will conduct joint innovation with its partners, empower them with a new framework and an integrated platform and create a talent pool.

These will be implemented via OpenLabs and through the Huawei ICT Academy and the Huawei Authorized Learning Partner (HALP) programs. To achieve these, Huawei will spend $300 million on the program over the next three years to support its global partners.

The support is part of a broader desire to boost digital infrastructure, including more robust connectivity and stronger, diverse computing resources. Huawei is also gunning to help organisations go beyond simple cloud adoption, to truly make the most of cloud as well as focusing on advanced technology services that leapfrog development.

“Our mission is to build out local digital ecosystems by developing our partners, strengthen the digital talent pool across the region and provide more support for its SMEs,” Yi said noting that these are the three primary ways the ICT ecosystem can help break through common barriers in digital transformation.

On the data connectivity front, Huawei also unveiled NetEngine AR5710, a hyper-converged gateway that is ideal for small and midsize branches, and NetEngine 8000 F8, an ultra-compact universal-service aggregation router. These new products are helping lay a solid data foundation to further unleash digital productivity.

In order to progress data transmission, Huawei said it has been exploring how to apply the fifth-generation fixed network (F5G) evolution across various industries. According to the firm, data is at the core of digital transformation, and data ingestion, transmission, storage, and analysis are key steps. Huawei provides full-stack products and product portfolios to support end-to-end data processing, accelerating customers’ digital transformation.

To address data storage, Huawei and Commvault, a data management software company, jointly launched a data protection solution that provides enterprise customers with secure and reliable data protection from end to end. This helps create a reliable and efficient storage foundation, allowing enterprises to maximize the value of data.

Huawei’s approach to digital transformation has three pillars: greener infrastructure, ongoing innovation, and shared experience. Huawei Cloud aims to be the best digitalization partner for customers, and is working with partners and customers to unleash digital with Everything as a Service.