Image Source:Huawei
As part of his visit to China on the sidelines of the FOCAC Summit, President of the Federal Republic of Somalia H.E Mohamed Abdullahi Farmajo visited Huawei's Beijing Executive Briefing Center today and met with Yi Xiang, Senior Vice President at Huawei.
H. E Farmajo said it is a pleasure to see achievements and accumulated technologies and capabilities in the field of ICT and looks forward to seeing Huawei contributing to a digitalized Somalia. He expected Huawei's active involvement in construction of Somalia by leveraging the power of ICT, to contribute to economic and social development of Somalia.
Yi Xiang said under the leadership of President Farmajo, Somalia implements national development plans and achieves rapid economic growth. Huawei has been working on ICT infrastructure in Somalia for many years, building more connectivity between Somali people and between Somalia and the world.
President Farmajo said the development of Somalia has the inherent advantages of strategic location and vast untapped resources. It has developed rapidly in the past few years, and economic and social life has gradually returned to the right track. It has attracted more and more Somalis living overseas to return to work and live. He hopes ICT will play a bigger role in areas such as increased investment attractiveness and improvement of people's lives.
Yi Xiang said that in the age of information, ICT has become as important an infrastructure as water and electricity, the improvement of connectivity has made it possible for the country to achieve leap-frog development. Guided by Somalia's National Development Plan for 2017 to 2019, Huawei will put its combination of Somalia's requirements and its advantages in resources, expertise, experience and cases accumulated over the years in ICT field. Huawei aims to unleash the potential of ICT to drive the country's socio-economic development and lay a solid foundation for future growth.
After the meeting, Huawei provided ICT talents training program to 30 Somalis for the next 3 years.
Huawei has been developing communications infrastructure in Somalia since it entered the market in 2004. Working with local operators, Huawei built the country's 3G, 4G, and 4.5G networks, and worked with carriers in providing the first mobile data services to Somalia.