The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT) and Huawei have signed a memorandum of understanding to promote technology innovation and entrepreneurship.
The MoU has also established an agreement between Huawei and MCIT to further develop its innovation centre in the Kingdom to include artificial intelligence and Internet of Things technologies designed to support Saudi entrepreneurship.
Abdullah Amer Al-Swaha, Saudi Arabia’s minister of communications and information technology, attended the signing ceremony, and was accompanied by deputy minister for technology and digital capacities, Dr. Ahmed bin Hamdan Al-Theneyan, Mark Xue, vice president of Huawei, Paul Scanlan, CTO, Huawei Technologies and Dennis Zhang, CEO, Huawei Tech Investment Saudi Arabia.
From 2018-2020, 1,500 Saudis will undergo training from Huawei in ICT skills.
Two of the programs, the Future Leaders Program and the National Industrial Training Institute Program, will end with full-time employment for every trainee.
Huawei will also provide awareness programs through visits as well as its ICT Skill Competition, which should reach an additional 5,000 students and trainees.
Al-Swaha said, “Huawei continues to be an ideal partner in our journey. We are proud of the accomplishments our past MoUs with Huawei have resulted in. We will now strive to accomplish the activities mentioned in this agreement, as it enables us to further empower the Saudi people, and assist them to build a Kingdom that is leading, regionally and globally, when it comes to the frontiers of the digital transformation.”
Xue, said, “We are in a crucial and exciting moment in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s journey towards digital transformation. We have long maintained an approach that is designed to assist and enable the Kingdom’s capabilities and enhance their collective knowledge and expertise in all areas of ICT in order to help them achieve their NTP 2020 and Vision 2030 goals. With robust and comprehensive training programs and expanded facilities that will offer world-class AI and IoT technologies, we are confident that our partnership with the MCIT will be a great service to the Saudi people and the Kingdom as a whole.”
Huawei’s training centre in Riyadh has graduated over 4,000 engineers since it was established in 2006, and more have taken part in educational initiatives at the Huawei Academy with the support of the Saudi Technical and Vocational Training Corporation (TVTC) and Yanbu Royal Commission.
