Huawei Top Employer increase the employability of young African talent

Since its establishment on the African continent in 1997, Huawei hopes not only to contribute to the digital transformation of the continent, but also to strengthen Africa’s human capital. It is through its committed vision “in Africa for Africa” that the company has been able to implement a balanced and attractive work environment for all its employees and partners. The certification of Top Employer proves that Huawei strives to be the best place to work for young African talent and help them build successful careers.

In Africa for the past twenty years, Huawei has been committed to bringing the digital world to every person, family and business in order to build a better-connected Africa. For twenty years, Huawei has been providing high-speed, stable and secure networks for Africa. They have helped 6 million households without fixed network infrastructure to access broadband and serve more than 900 million people in Africa, the equivalent of three quarters of the continent’s population.

Huawei has the ambition to promote the digital transformation of states, businesses and enable more Africans to benefit from digital services, those are its main objectives. This vision is applied in its daily activities, helping every African citizen to be part of the Huawei digital community. The company is committed to continuous business growth while ensuring the improvement and development of the business environment in the countries in which it operates.

Through its activities, Huawei makes it a point of honor to contribute positively to social development by strengthening local human resources, an essential asset for the growth of a company and a country. To date, there are more than 9,000 employees on the continent, 76% of whom are local employees. In order to ensure a good cohesion between Chinese employees and locals, the company pays great attention to the values of empathy and consideration through diversity and inclusion. Cross-cultural management is a practice Huawei has been implementing since its creation. In addition, Huawei works tirelessly to provide its employees with ambitious projects, the best tools, flexibility and environments that promote their development.  The company places a great deal of importance on the responsibility, autonomy and pride of each employee because they are convinced that the progress of employees goes hand in hand with that of the company.  With this in mind, Huawei provides specialized career counsellors who are available to provide advice on the next steps in a career that is accessible to all employees.

This view of work applies not only to Huawei employees, but also to their partners and the organizations they work with. The goal remains to create an open, cooperative and mutually beneficial industry ecosystem with rapid growth for all.

To this end, Huawei cooperates with more than 1,200 subcontractors installing telecommunications networks in Africa. More than 24,000 subcontractor engineers have been certified by Huawei training and more than 150,000 employees have been recruited throughout the industry chain. Cooperation with excellent suppliers and partners in various sectors such as health, energy, finance and transport create many local jobs and business models directly and indirectly.  Customers, suppliers and Huawei grow together and contribute to Africa’s digital economy. The slogan “in Africa for Africa” could not be better embodied.

However, Huawei is aware that the socio-economic growth of African countries cannot be maintained without fully integrating youth into development plans. At present, the phenomenon of “brain drain” is still rampant in many regions of Africa. Every year millions of students and skilled workers leave their countries of origin for the countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in search of the best professional opportunities. According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), by 2050, the continent will have lost a total of 34 million skilled workers to OECD countries, even though African countries are among the countries most in need for skilled workers.

In the face of this scourge, Huawei plays a major role in helping to improve the digital skills of Africans and encourage the next generation of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) talent. The company is committed to improve the overall level of ICT education in Africa, promoting digital literacy, helping Africa build local ICT capacity and harnessing digital skills to deploy future opportunities for talented young people. To this end, the company has established the Huawei ICT Academy “ICT Academy” in more than 400 high-level ICT universities and colleges in 17 African countries. The aim is to teach students cutting-edge ICT knowledge. 50,000 ICT talents have been trained in areas such as routing and switching, cloud, computing, 5G and AI and over 20,000 people have received Huawei professional technical certifications. More and more young people have started their ICT careers through the ICT Academy. In addition, Huawei has systematically provided professional training in ICT to more than 2,000 teachers, helping them to improve their teaching skills and better transmit their knowledge. In 2020, ICT Academy rapidly transformed itself into an online education and launched the Learning ON initiative to suspend face-to-face courses and implement more than 500 online courses to enable students to learn even during the epidemic.

Since 2014, Huawei launches the Seeds for the Future program in Africa every year to select outstanding young talent in the field of ICT. More than 1,000 exceptional young Africans from 33 countries have travelled to China to receive training in the latest ICT technologies.  At the same time, since 2016, Huawei has been organizing an annual ICT Competition in Africa to promote learning, bringing together more than 150,000 students from 22 countries.

Finally, Huawei is in close cooperation with the African Union and United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in the field of education.  Together, both parties are working to make digital skills and artificial intelligence capabilities available to Africa by investing heavily in educating the next generation of ICT talent in Africa.

The Top Employer award is symbolic of Huawei’s efforts to ensure development opportunities for its employees with more jobs and work opportunities to create more value for the company and the country. Through the years, Huawei engaged to be the best place to work for the most dedicated and ambitious candidate to build a successful career. It also recognizes Huawei’s commitment to providing a balanced and attractive work environment for all its employees and partners. In the coming years, Huawei in Africa will continue to improve the human resource best practices to ensure that it is the best place to work in the region, seeking to attract the best talent and provide a healthy work environment to help them realize their full potential.