Huawei South Africa has won the Digital Innovator Award at The State IT Agency’s (SITA) Digital Public Service Awards ceremony, which took place this week in Durban.
The event was attended by Minister Khumbudzo Ntshavheni and Deputy Minister Philly Mapulane of South Africa’s Department of Communications and Digital Technologies, as well as industry CEOs, government ministers from four African countries, and officials from the International Telecommunications Union.
The awards took place at the 14th Annual GovTech Conference, themed “Reshaping the citizen experience through enhanced service delivery”.
The Digital Innovator Award recognises outstanding innovation and IT product development in the ICT sector. This award recognises Huawei’s new methods, ideas and products that have accelerated digital transformation in South Africa. It also recognises the company for having supported IT innovation skills in the sector.
At the awards gala dinner, Huawei South Africa CEO Spawn Fan outlined how digital technologies can stimulate economic development and improve service delivery. “In Huawei’s view, connectivity and computing are the cornerstones of the digital economy,” he said. “The convergence of connectivity and computing will change industries and government, in critical areas like education, and healthcare to create new value for society.”
He also outlined Huawei’s efforts to support innovation, not just as a hardware and solution provider, but as an investor in the entire ICT ecosystem. This includes a commitment to industry partnerships, supporting SMMEs and building and retaining an ICT talent pipeline for South Africa.
“Digitalisation is never achieved overnight,” Fan concluded. “A large number of technology enterprises are required to participate and a wide range of ICT talents are required to support the sustainable development of digitalisation.”