Huawei's AI-Based Approach Announced for South Africa's Intelligent Development
In the heart of Johannesburg, South Africa, Huawei hosted the Connect 2025 event on July 3, 2025. The focus of the event was Huawei's AI strategy and product innovations, aimed at accelerating South Africa's intelligent transformation and digital future.
Joy Huang, Vice President of Huawei Cloud, emphasized Africa's historic opportunities in AI, positioning Huawei Cloud as a pivotal player in building a smarter, more intelligent Africa. The event attracted over 2,900 participants, all eager to explore how AI and cloud technologies can unlock growth opportunities and reshape industries in South Africa.
Key elements of Huawei's AI strategy and innovations presented at the event included AI-Native Cloud Services. Huawei Cloud is committed to building AI-native cloud services by integrating "cloud for AI" and "AI for cloud," aimed at powering intelligent transformation across Africa. This includes developing foundational AI technologies and advanced infrastructure like Cloud Matrix, a super node solution for high performance.
Huawei Cloud also showcased its support for mainstream AI models, with over 70 models currently supported. The Pango 5.5 model was recently upgraded, delivering new value for industries worldwide, while two significant models - a 7 billion and a 72 billion parameter model - have been open-sourced. Their cloud platform also provides cloud intelligence for robotics and end-to-end development tools for embodied intelligence.
Huawei pledged to train 50,000 ICT professionals in South Africa by 2028 to boost AI adoption and data utilization, currently under 30%. This commitment to talent development is a crucial part of Huawei's strategy, aiming to nurture local talent and support a sustainable AI ecosystem in the country.
Industry collaboration and digital transformation were also highlighted at the event. Over 3,000 partners and customers from government, finance, transport, and energy sectors gathered to explore how AI and cloud technologies can unlock growth opportunities and reshape industries in South Africa. Huawei showcased end-to-end ICT solutions tailored for diverse sectors to enable business model innovation and intelligent digital transformation.
Huawei Cloud looks forward to joining hands with more African customers to unlock new opportunities in industry intelligence and create an intelligent future. The company is dedicated to offering AI-native cloud services in Africa and hopes to be an integral part of South Africa's industrial intelligence.
In summary, Huawei's AI strategy in South Africa revolves around deploying AI-native cloud infrastructure, supporting diverse AI models, nurturing local talent, and partnering with industries to drive comprehensive digital and intelligent transformation across the country and continent. Pangu Models, industry-facing applications by Huawei Cloud, help customers tackle specific challenges and reimagine operations and efficiency across numerous industries, aiming to expedite the intelligent transformation across industries in South Africa and throughout the continent.
Cloud technology, artificial intelligence, and healthcare were significant topics discussed at the Huawei Connect 2025 event. Huawei Cloud, positioning itself as a key player in Africa's AI evolution, revealed its plan to power intelligent transformation across Africa by integrating "cloud for AI" and "AI for cloud", creating AI-native cloud services. This strategy includes the development of advanced infrastructure like the Cloud Matrix and support for over 70 mainstream AI models, some of which have been open-sourced. In addition, Huawei Cloud aims to nurture 50,000 ICT professionals in South Africa by 2028 to boost AI adoption and data utilization.
