Huawei South Africa, in partnership with the Department of Communications and Digital Technologies, has officially launched the Women4Tech digital skills training programme, with an attendance of 107 women entrepreneurs. The initiative aims to help women advance their skills and use new technologies to grow, improve, and digitise their businesses.
The programme aims to help tech-forward women entrepreneurs with three specific technological skillsets: cloud computing, digital marketing, and introduction to app development. Aside from the training, the attended will also be afforded a networking opportunity with other successful women entrepreneurs, including an award-winning woman app developer within the Huawei Mobile App ecosystem.
“Our Women4Tech programme has attracted women business owners from all over the country. Women and girls were more negatively affected by the Covid-19 pandemic and when it comes to rectifying the digital gender gap, we need to keep this in mind. Our program is aimed at giving women owned businesses an opportunity to participate fully in the digital economy. In the march toward the fourth industrial revolution or 4IR, it is critical that no one gets left behind. And that is why our Women’s month initiative resonates more,” according to Huawei.
Acting-Director General of the Department of Communications and Digital Technologies, Nonkqubela Jordan-Dyani, says: “It’s always an honour to be with our partners, especially Huawei. I personally have been dealing with Huawei since 2016, when we signed a digital skills cooperation agreement with them.
“This digital skills training programme is important for us as a country, in order for us to have the required skills set that is needed to sustain and grow our ICT sector. It’s amazing how resilient our sector has been during the pandemic. We’re all grappling with the current losses, but we believe that the ICT industry will stay standing and may even be stronger than before.
“Among other things, the Department in rolling out its five-year Digital Skills Implementation Programme and has decided to launch and host an annual Digital Skills Colloquium to galvanise and strengthen partnerships for the Digital Skills Development towards the mobilisation and attraction of investment into the highly critical 4th Industrial Revolution (4IR) learning areas. The main objective to the Colloquium is to ensure that the mandate of the Department on leading in Digital Transformation brings about creation of new opportunities for South Africans to participate in a Digital Economy,” says Jordan.
The Women4Tech programme kicked off with an introduction to cloud computing by Michael Langeveld, Vice President of Huawei Cloud Southern Africa. “Cloud allows us to solve problems here and take those solutions to the world,” he said. “We have two kinds of environments when it comes to the cloud. The first is people who consume cloud products and the second is value creators who create and resell cloud capabilities. We think there’s a great opportunity in the latter.”
According to Langeveld, Huawei has already seen entrepreneurs taking advantage of this opportunity to advance their operations. Langeveld adds that Huawei’s local data centres make it easier for entrepreneurs to benefit from the Huawei Cloud.
This Digital Marketing course will be delivered by Musa Kalenga, a renowned entrepreneur, investor and author. “Over the last decade consumers have evolved in their need for information and the way they consume it. Technology has evolved to such an extent that the consumer context is now digital. The importance of digital marketing is that you can easily track and monitor how you reach, engage and convert consumers through strategic integrated communication,” says Kalenga.
Women4Tech will continue until 25 August, with attendees receiving a six-month Huawei Cloud subscription and a certificate of attendance at its conclusion.