Huawei announces plan to cultivate 500,000 digital talents in 5 years for APAC

JAKARTA, Indonesia, Nov. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Global tech company Huawei has announced on Wednesday an investment of $50 million to cultivate 500,000 digital talents for the Asia Pacific region over the next five years.

The ASEAN Foundation and Huawei co-host the Asia Pacific Innovation Day – Digital Talent Summit 2021 on November 3. The online summit brought together policy makers, researchers and industry experts to share solutions and best practices in building a sustainable ecosystem that will help foster digital talents in the Asia Pacific.

In his keynote speech, President of Huawei Asia Pacific Jeffery Liu announced the company's plan to invest $50 million in the next five years to develop 500,000 digital talents in the Asia Pacific region. "Cultivating innovative ICT talent ecosystem is fundamental to the digital transformation. Leveraging shared innovations with win-win outcomes, we can harness the power of ICT skills to fly us into a digital future," he said.

Over the past 20 years, Huawei has also invested heavily in developing local digital talent. For example, the Seeds for the Future program has run in 15 Asia-Pacific countries and regions, benefiting more than 5,000 students from over 90 universities. Huawei has also been working with top universities, and has established over 259 ICT academies in Asia-Pacific. Launched in 2019, the Huawei ASEAN Academy program has covered Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Cambodia, and will extend to even more countries in the future. In the past 2 years, Huawei has invested $10 million and trained more than 130,000 ICT talents in the Asia Pacific region through these programs.

"Many government institutions, universities, companies, and development partners have made significant progress towards these endeavors. I have noticed that Huawei Cambodia has put tremendous efforts into the ICT cultivation projects, including the Huawei Certificate Program to train and certify ICT students and employees. These are good practices for other institutions to benchmark for the betterment of our talent ecosystem in Cambodia as well as in the region," said Dr. CHEA Vandeth, Minister of Posts and Telecommunications, Cambodia.

The commitment to bridge digital talent gap in Asia Pacific, in particular ASEAN, was further strengthened with the signing ceremony of Memorandum of Understanding between ASEAN Foundation and Huawei ASEAN Academy. Through ASEAN Seeds for the Future, ASEAN Foundation and Huawei ASEAN Academy strive to build the digital capacities of youth in the ten ASEAN Member States so that they can thrive in the era of digital economy.

"We are delighted to see companies like Huawei are already taking action in cultivating the talents for the region," said Sri Lanka Minister of Youth and Sports Namal Rajapaksa, "In the future, we look forward to cooperate with Huawei to build an innovative ecosystem bringing ICT knowledge to digital talents and empowering SMEs to better adapt to the digital transformation of our country."