New Huawei East African training centre opened

Huawei has officially opened an East African training centre in Kenya, a move set to enhance its capacity to facilitate technical skills transfer in the country.

The new training centre at Huawei’s Head office campus in Lavington Nairobi will provide a global standard training environment for regional trainees on new generation computing, telecommunication and related technologies.

Speaking during the launch, Huawei Technologies East Africa Head of Learning Services, Peter Thuo stated that, “this training center will increasingly focus on providing training on new technologies including 4G, IoT, cloud computing and Software Defined Networks (SDN)/Network Functions Virtualisation (NFV). It aims to build ICT skills amongst employees and key players in the ICT ecosystem in the region in order to drive the ICT industry and the countries’ digital transformations, as well as enhancing Kenya’s leading role in East Africa.”

Over 7,600 people have been trained in the sector since Huawei started and the new training centre will be useful in driving Kenya’s transformation, creating jobs, and creating local companies.

“Building ICT skills for our youth is very crucial to the success of the country’s economic transformation agenda, and it is for this reason that the Kenyan government is establishing an advanced institute for science and technology at Konza Technopolis which will  focus in research and post graduate programs including  ICT,” stated Eng. John Tanui, Konza Technopolis Development Authority (KoTDA) during the launch.

Peter Thuo also reflected on the achievements of the previous training center whilst also explaining the future direction of the new training center and the kind of programs it will be providing.

One of these programs is hardware installation training, for which there is a dedicated location which will soon be providing training for more than 200 students from the Presidential Digital Talent Programme.

The new training center is also part of the commitment Huawei has made through its MoU with the ICT Authority to building ICT capacity and skills in Kenya that includes; the Seeds for the Future training program for undergraduate students. Nine of these students also attended the launch event to share their experiences from their recent training in China.

Reflecting on the recent renewal of the MoU between Huawei and ICT Authority, Robert Mugo, ICT Authority Acting CEO commended Huawei for its efforts.

“This is yet another demonstration of Huawei’s commitment to building ICT skills in Kenya together with the ICT Authority. I am excited that this new training center will be able to expand its training numbers and training topics in order to stand Kenya in good stead to take advantage of the digital transformation. Building advanced ICT skills is a great compliment to the other areas we partner with Huawei on for graduates, undergraduates and also for those who did not attend University,” concluded Mugo.