From 26 to 29 February 2024, the Spanish city of Barcelona, a model smart city in Europe for the digitalisation of basic services, hosted the Mobile World Congress (MWC). Among the telecoms players who made their presence felt was Huawei. The digital giant made a series of announcements and presented solutions focusing on the cloud, digital energy and digital connectivity in Africa. Here's a look back at the highlights of this year's event, which focused on sustainable innovation.
The Mobile World Congress (MWC) came to a close on 29 February 2024 in Barcelona, Spain. For four days, the Catalan city welcomed a host of telecoms players, including handset manufacturers, start-ups, economic decision-makers and the international press, from all five continents. Huawei was one of the leading players present at this major information and communication technology (ICT) event.
It has been organised for 38 years by the Global System for Mobile Communications (GSMA). The tech giant took the opportunity to launch the “Intelligent Digital Transformation Pioneers Club” (OTF) in partnership with African operators such as Ethio Telecom. Said Aragaw, Marketing Director of the Ethiopian public operator, emphasised “the migration of African industries to the cloud”. This is one of Huawei’s priorities for 2024 in North, West and Central Africa.
Focus on the cloud market
To this end, Egypt will be the first African country in Huawei’s cloud market. According to Jéremy Lin, Vice President of Huawei Northern Africa, there are a number of reasons why the country of the pharaohs was chosen, including the size of its population (109 million) and the interconnection with neighbouring countries, which will be able to take advantage of this system. The cloud enables companies to use remote servers hosted on the Internet to store, manage and process data.
This means lower IT costs (less physical equipment) and more flexible software services. This $315 billion global market (2023 figures from the American platform IDC), largely dominated by giants such as Microsoft and Amazon, still eludes Africa. So there’s no question of Huawei abandoning the continent in this age of globalisation and advances in artificial intelligence (AI).
Innovative solutions presented with great fanfare in Barcelona
The other point on which Huawei Northern Africa will be accelerating in 2024 is “digital energy”, stressed Adnane Ben Halima. According to the Vice President in charge of Public Relations in the region, the aim is to provide concrete solutions in terms of solar energy, battery storage and management systems (to avoid wastage) in a context of low electrification and frequent load shedding. According to the United Nations, 600 million Africans live without electricity, and Huawei intends to turn the tide through its innovative approaches.
Read also- COP27: renewable energy, a crucial issue for Africa’s development
Among the innovations presented in Barcelona is the xCare technological solution. It aims to boost network performance and revenue growth for communications service providers (CSPs) facing competition from international players. Specifically, “xCare has three options. Its UserCare option has already tripled the number of 4G users and increased average data usage for certain operators. In addition, the 2ndSIMCare option has contributed to a 10.5% increase in data revenues from target users for other operators”, Huawei points out. So the digital revolution is underway in Africa, and it has no intention of stopping until it has had a lasting impact on people’s daily lives.
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