Closing the Digital Skills Gap for Inclusive Prosperity - Huawei Developers

ByJay Chen
May 18, 2021
We are not just entering an intelligent world, we are now living in one. All things are sensing, converting our physical world into digital signals. All things are connected, from humans to machines. And all things are intelligent, powered by big data and artificial intelligence. These advances make our lives easier, more responsive, and more autonomous.
The foundation of all this is new ICT includes 5G, IoT, big data, and cloud computing. But, we face a huge labor shortage. Korn Ferry research finds that Asia Pacific is facing an imminent labor shortage of 47 million people by 2030 and an annual opportunity cost of US$4.238 trillion. According to PwC’s 20th CEO Survey, more than 50% of APAC CEOs say it’s difficult to hire digital talent with the right skills.
Asia Pacific is facing an imminent labor shortage of 47 million people by 2030 and an annual opportunity cost of US$4.238 trillion​
To combat this talent shortage and also help address current learning challenges as a result of COVID-19, Huawei has launched multiple initiatives throughout Asia Pacific to provide learning services that help facilitate remote learning and enhance technical skills.
From our partnership with Bijoy Digital and UNESCO in Bangladesh to provide digital solutions to facilitate distance learning through a project called “Bridging the Education Gap”, to our efforts in Indonesia where Huawei Cloud and ULearning have partnered to provide an online learning management system (e-learning), we’re helping provide connectivity and e-learning to everyone from elementary school students, to universities, and professionals.
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63,000 women have already received training through the Digital Training Bus project in Bangladesh, launched by Huawei & its partners in 2017.
Education, along with AI Healthcare and Enterprise on Cloud, is one of the three foundation services launched by Huawei Cloud as part of our global action plan to help customers fight COVID-19 with cloud and AI services. We’re actively working with partners to provide online teaching services to schools and universities during this pandemic so that teaching and learning activities can continue undisrupted.
The cloud platform will support distance learning where teachers and students can interact through audio, video, and chat rooms. Online tools will enhance the efficiency of curriculum development and allow teachers to work together remotely and share teaching materials. Apart from empowering students to learn on their own using low-latency HD VOD, the platform will distribute teaching content distribution faster, enable online exams, and monitor learning progress in real time.
Read more: How Sharing Education Resources Gives Children Wings to Fly
Huawei has called for closer collaboration with its local partners to boost the development of joint solutions as countries move into the stage of economic recovery. As part of this, we also announced our Virtual Academy, with more than 140 free online courses to accelerate training and up-skilling of ICT professionals and SME digital transformation.
Similar programs have been established in Asia Pacific countries including Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines, providing thousands of ICT courses and hundreds of skilled trainers to nurture a national digital talent ecosystem. The Huawei program includes a top level design with well-defined ICT talent certification standards and a Huawei ICT Academy cooperation project for global universities. More importantly, we hold ICT competitions and job fairs for students to develop their skills, get recognized for it, and immediately secure employment opportunities in fields of their choosing.
This year, our ICT talent ecosystem cultivation programs will be extended to countries and regions such as Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Nepal, through which we aim to develop 100,000 ICT professionals and popularize digital skills over the next five years in this dynamic region by collaborating with local governments, universities and industrial partners.
At scale, Huawei supports collaborative education with programs like Train the Trainer and our authorized training partners can deliver Huawei certification training globally. With academies and training partners established, we can promote the value of certification and help cultivate the much needed talent for the ICT industry.
We leverage our knowledge of the industry and provide Huawei certification through development solutions that allow students to learn and acquire new skills. We then use the Huawei ICT Competition and Job Fairs to allow students to get recognized and secure valuable employment at either one of our customers or partners, or even at Huawei directly.
The world ahead will be one dominated by devices: connecting, sensing, and reacting to everything around us. We hope our education programs not only reaffirms our commitment to social responsibility, but also prepares the next generation of experts to design and navigate this digital landscape.
Our future depends on it.
Save the Date​Learn more about the upcoming Digital Talent Regional Summit at which I’ll be speaking.