As Nigeria battles to diversify her economy from oil to information and communications technology (ICT), the country may have found a willing ally in Chinese multinational technology solutions company, Huawei.
Huawei’s Managing Director for the Abuja office in Nigeria, Mr. Li Teng stated that the company “is dedicated to the development of ICT talent in Nigeria,” stressing that the company understands the need to improve IT penetration in the country hence it has developed “specialized learning platforms” with a goal to contribute to Nigerian society’s growth “through ICT literacy and infrastructure development as well as share technical knowhow in order to help create a better world.”
Mr. Li expressed Huawei’s commitment to partnering with Nigeria in the development of ICT when the company signed a memorandum of understanding for ICT capacity building with the Digital Bridge Institute at the institute’s headquarters in Abuja.
He stated: “As we all know, ICT has played a crucial role in driving the country’s economic development, but ICT talent shortage is still a bottleneck for many government agencies and enterprises.
“As a responsible corporate organisation, Huawei is dedicated to building a better connected world and narrow the digital divide. With over 17 years’ experience in Nigeria, we have not only supplied high-quality telecom equipment s but contributed to National ICT talent development.”
Li also enumerated some interventions the company has already made in Nigeria. He commented:
“We have refined over 8000 ICT personnel in Nigeria for telecom operators, governments, enterprises and students in the last 17 years and also gone further with several trainings like “ICT future seeds program”, FMCT 1000 girls Training and 2000 youth for ICT change.”
Emphasising why Huawei was entering into the relationship with DBI, Li stated: “During the course of our 17 years’ experience we have realised that ICT talent development is a big system project hence we need to cooperate more to meet the requirement for National ICT development that is why we are very glad to find a strong partner like DBI. We hope together we can accelerate ICT talent development to build a better digital Nigeria.”
The cooperation with DBI he said would lead to the improvement of the training centres operation, teachers’ cultivation and course development with Huawei’s rich training resources and global successful training operation.
“Our goal is to ensure that DBI remains the most competitive government ICT education and training Institute in the whole of Nigeria,” Li said.
Speaking further, he said:
“The execution of this MoU signifies the first time that the industry’s leading ICT Company and the local’s reputable government-owned ICT training Institute integrate in the ICT talent training and certification domain.
“The collaboration between Huawei and DBI will blaze a new trail for Nigeria’s ICT talent cultivation and supply rich talent resource pool to support Nigeria’s digital economic transformation,” adding:
“We believe that this partnership shall boost the overall development of ICT literacy and through Huawei’s 20 years ICT talent cultivation practice experience, we shall add significant value to DBI’s rich experience in local education and government industry talent cultivation to supply end to end service from formulating the ICT competence framework, evaluating competence, designing the competence improvement solution, implementing training pedagogy to providing Huawei certification exam services.”
The Digital Bridge Institute (DBI) was established by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) in 2004 in the wake of the global growth of ICT industry, influenced by the successful auction of Digital Mobile Licensing which led to the launch of GSM operations in the country.