China trains 1000 Young South Africans in ICT
The Information and communications technology (ICT) giant Huawei from China have just signed an agreement with the Pretoria Government to train 1000 young South Africans in the next five years in the field of telecommunication.
Telecommunications and Postal Services Minister Siyabonga Cwele said ” The cooperation on capacity building is aimed at sharing information, expertise, experience and technical assistance among the different structures operating in the field of telecommunications,”.
Minister Cwele stated that the youth who would be involved in the training would gain in these areas including telecommunication network security, optimisation and telecommunication administration. Also, some other areas of training would comprise new technology for satellite navigation, the next generation network construction, cloud computing and big data network construction.
However, some of the expected outcome is to help enhance the department’s strategies to implement our programmes, whilst at the same time include the rollout of broadband and lowering the cost to communicate,” effectively.
Additionally, the e-Strategy department would benefit from this programme as it would provide a sturdy framework for South Africa to include youth, women, people with disabilities as well as small and medium sized business in the ICT sector.
We hope to promote ICT literacy and awareness in the country from the training according to Minister Cwele. Furthermore, he encouraged the youth that would be involved to invest wisely in this great opportunity in order to bring in new ideas that would enhance the ICT advancement in South African, whilst more jobs opportunities are created.
A cutting edge innovation centre with modern technologies and infrastructure was launched by the Minister, that would create 40 permanent jobs in addition to the 1200 people already employed by Huawei in South Africa.
This sets an open door to introduce other solutions such as Internet of Things (IoT) network of physical devices, vehicles, buildings and other items embedded with electronics, software, sensors, actuators, and network connectivity that enable these objects to collect and exchange data.
Huawei’s involvement with the Pretoria government provides an opportunity for governments on the continent to consider standards that can be set for gadgets, that can be used on future mobile networks and for entrepreneurs to spot opportunities to develop gadgets and applications that will run over these network according to Minister Cwele.