Huawei serves Pakistan
Huawei, the leading China-based telecommunications company, and now a global brand, has been providing products and services in Pakistan for the past 22 years. During this time period, and in and out of various socioeconomic conditions, Huawei Pakistan has paid $331 million in local taxes, made local procurements worth $1.6 billion, and created more than 25,000 job opportunities in Pakistan.
On a global scale, Huawei today employs 194,000 employees in more than 70 countries and is ranked highly no matter the terms of consideration; it is 68th on Interbrand’s Top 100 Best Global Brands & 49th on Fortune 500’s Global companies.
Other than providing B2B ICT solutions and services in Pakistan, the tech giant is also actively involved in technology transfer and local talent training in order to promote the development of the now its central idea: “Digital Pakistan” How Huawei is laying the groundwork for things before they are needed is a lesson in foresight, and it is through their several Public-Private Partnerships that this 20/20 foresight can be acted upon.
Seeds for the Future
One of Huawei’s most prestigious programs to cultivate local ICT talent and sow its investment in the country’s potential has been it’s ‘Seeds for the Future Program’, first launched in Pakistan in 2015. As part of the cross-cultural learning program, leading engineering students (picked by HEC with rigorous criteria) of the country come together for training sessions in Chinese culture, Strategic leadership, 5G, cloud computing, AI, smart homes, the Internet of Things (IoT), and cybersecurity.
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Usually, in situations uninterrupted by global pandemics, the chosen students would travel together for training in China. For 2020, however, the training had to be moved to online webinars, and only the top two students were given a free trip to China to study further in 2021.
This is an example of how Huawei engages with the youth on multiple levels, providing not only technical learning, but also international exposure for people who might not have otherwise had it. 87 students have reaped the rewards of these seeds since its inception.
ICT Academies
The most straightforward and largely-distributed form of support that Huawei has provided to the ICT sector comes in the form of its HEC-approved ICT academies, spread out throughout the provinces and in areas considered to be more remote and inaccessible, places that are far away from the center. Last year, Huawei and HEC set up 8 new ICT academies, adding to the already existing ones to make 23 academies throughout the nation.
These academies, aided by leading Huawei professionals in training quality instructors, provide students with access to the latest ICT technologies and teach them with deeper insight in the realms of cloud, storage, and security technologies. Further, Huawei certifies those who pass through the academies, a certification that means a lot coming from a tech behemoth like Huawei and more formally recognized by the Higher Education Commission of Pakistan.
Huawei is a company with an ethos that can be boiled down to its signature slogan: Building a Fully Connected, Intelligent World
As a logical extension of Huawei’s involvement in the education sector, Huawei also recently joined hands with the locally renowned tech university, Ghulam Ishaq Khan Institute of Engineering Sciences and Technologies (GIKI), to launch Pakistan’s first-ever undergraduate degree in Artificial Intelligence. This, in the context of enterprise-academia partnership, fares well as an example of things to come.
Huawei ICT Competition
What’s better than the friendly competition to get students engaged with their topic? To further nurturing of the youth with technological nourishment, Huawei incentivizes students from all around Pakistan with its ICT Competition, an international competition that allows the winners of the domestic chapter of the competition to travel to China to compete in the final for a grand prize of US $ 20,000.
It provides them an unforgettable experience with exposure to other motivated, innovative, youthful individuals from all over the world to create an environment of progress and mutual learning.
Last year, the Huawei competition held 134 roadshow activities in colleges and universities, attracting 21,565 participants from 437 universities across 10 countries in the Middle East region, with Pakistan tech talents winning second and third position in the regional final. Pakistan attracted more than 12,000 students after conducting more than 50 roadshows in the country.
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In this way, the participants of these competitions not only get updated on the latest emerging technologies, but they actively get involved and motivated in the process of creating a Digital Pakistan by interacting with likeminded youths with big dreams for their countries, as well.
Huawei: relevant to Pakistan’s ICT future
The relevance of Huawei to the current notion of Pakistani development, with special regard to the creation and country-wide implementation of Special Economic Zones, cannot be overstated. It is not simply the Chinese connection, nor the fact that Huawei is a business that has been operating in Pakistan before there was a gargantuan project intended to lift Pakistan’s economy, that makes Huawei such a prominent figure in this rapidly progressing game — it is their demonstrated dedication to the cause of long-term projects in the furthering of PublicPrivate Partnerships throughout the nation.
Huawei is a company with an ethos that can be boiled down to its signature slogan: Building a Fully Connected, Intelligent World. It is this future world of ultimate connectivity and digital proficiency that Huawei considers within grasp, no matter the short-term pessimism that often overtakes those in developing countries when the goal is still too far to see, and it is this world that Huawei works to create for Pakistanis.
While many major companies, many of whom are Huawei’s global competitors, have shunned attempts at partnering with a country that has a checkered history when it comes to political and economic stability, Huawei has decidedly never backed down from the challenge.
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Their successes might only be tangible in the future, but their investment into the talent ecosystem, as well as the safeguarding of Pakistan’s ICT future, will provide a labor cushion for the Pakistan that we cannot yet envision, but for which all this work is being done: a Pakistan that is digital, connected, and thoroughly intelligent in all respects.