Transformative technologies like AI have the potential to drive sustainable development goals, said Dr Jassim Haji, President, International Group of Artificial Intelligence.

 

He was participating in a panel discussion at the second annual Huawei Innovation Day that discussed the importance of open partnerships and collaborations for shared success in building the ICT Ecosystem in MEA, the role of Digital Power in telecom networks and green solutions in cloud.

 

Held in parallel with Gitex Global 2022, the Huawei MEA Innovation Day 2022 was organised in partnership with the Arab ICT Organisation (AICTO) under the theme of "Collaboration to Unleash Innovation for Sustainable Digital Future".

 

Region’s leaders

The annual event gathered the region's government leaders from different sectors, industry analysts, ICT ecosystem partners and international standardisation, and Huawei's senior leadership team.

 

Jeff Wang, Global President of Public Affairs and Communications Huawei, delivered the opening keynote speech to highlight Huawei's commitment to supporting the MEA digital transformation and ICT sustainability future. 

 

The panel was hosted by Toni Eid, founder of Telecom Review Group & CEO of Trace Media, and attended by  Dr Elsadig Gamaleldeen Elsadig Karar, Director General of the Telecommunications and Post Regulatory Authority of Sudan (TPRA) and Dr Ammar Al Husaini, Deputy Director General at Central Agency for Information Technology, Kuwait.

 

Collaboration vital

Eng Mohamed Ben Amor, Secretary General of the Arab ICT Organisation (AICTO), the event partner, delivered the keynote speech, highlighting the importance of collaboration between various regional stakeholders and global partners to build an integrated ICT ecosystem for a sustainable digital economy. "We are delighted with this collaboration with Huawei around an insightful topic increasingly becoming the keystone for sustainable technological development," Amor stated, adding, "If "innovation" was always and will remain the engine of economic and social progress with a profound transformational impact on our lives, technological innovation will be, without any doubt, the compulsory way towards a better digital future. Therefore, we highly trust that technological innovation will help transform challenges into opportunities and shorten the path to achieving our common goals. This requires, in particular, a strong regional and international cooperation framework to strengthen national and regional innovation systems and models leading to innovative and sustainable technological initiatives."

 

Broadest ICT ecosystem

Steven Yi, President of Huawei Middle East & Africa, added: "Our mission remains to bring the broadest ICT ecosystem together to inspire change and deliver socioeconomic growth. We are hopeful the lessons we take from the event today will  help bring us closer to an open, intelligent world that has been our mission from Day 1."

 

Additionally, various keynotes were also delivered by  Dr Fadia Kiwan, Director General of Arab Women Organisation,  Dr Khaled Wali, Director of the ICT Department at the League of Arab States,  Dr Mohammed Al-Ohali, President of KFU (King Faisal University) and Jawad Abbasi, Head of MENA, GSMA.

 

The second panel discussion moderated by Caroline Faraj, CNN VP and CNN Arabic Editor-in-Chief, shed light on the important topic of empowering the role of women in tech. In the digital era, Huawei strongly believes that more opportunities and support must be given to women to ensure they have access to the education and training they need to be competitive in the digital economy. 

 

Equipping women

Equipping women with these skills has proven to promote social integration and inclusive and diversified societies. The panel was attended by Dr Fatma Taher, IEEE UAE Section Chair, Dr Eman Said Al Abri, Dean of the College of Computing and Information Sciences, the University of Technology and Applied Sciences, Oman, DrMardin Abdullah Anwar, Director of ICT and Statistics at Salahaddin University, Erbil, Iraq and Rania Halimeh, Regional Director, META, Logical Operations. Panelists discussed the importance of public and private partnerships to nurture innovation, local female ICT talents and create ICT future leaders, improve university curriculums and programmes in light of ICT accelerated innovation, and fill the talent gap in cybersecurity, among other topics.

 

Shunli Wang, Huawei's Vice President in the Middle East delivered the closing remarks during the event, and highlighted the need to lead new ways for public-private sector collaborations to drive shared success and "Unleash Innovation for a Sustainable Digital Future in MEA region". 

 

Wang also mentioned Huawei’s focus on 5.5G which will soon become a reality, enabling a 10 Gbps experience and a hundred billion connections.-- TradeArabia News Service