Huawei SA’s cloud business has partnered with Cell C, to provide cloud services to enterprise, government and small business customers.
The tech firms this week signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) on the sidelines of Africa Tech Festival 2025 in Cape Town.
Speaking at the MOU event, Steven Chen, MD of Huawei Cloud SA, said the companies have been working together for 20 years.
“Today marks a new milestone for us as we take our partnership to new heights. We know Cell C has their smart partner strategy and I think it perfectly matches the Huawei Cloud strategy, both globally and locally.
“We not only provide cloud infrastructure-as-a-service but also the required technology and our expertise as a service, to enable digital transformation for our customers.
“I think our partnership will meet customers’ requirements, especially for government, big enterprises and small businesses. Together, we want to provide a government cloud platform-as-a-service to government departments, helping local government improve their innovations, efficiency and operations.”
Huawei Cloud’s SA business kicked-off in 2019, offering its commercial cloud services. According to Huawei officials, the company has since opened three data centres in the country.
There is ongoing and increased adoption of cloud technologies by businesses across various industries, driven by the need for agility, scalability and cost optimisation in an increasingly digital landscape.
According to the Africa Analysis 2024 South Africa Cloud Computing Market Growth Report, SA’s cloud market is expected to surge to over R113 billion by 2028, up from R35 billion last year.
Industry commentators previously said they anticipatethe public sector to increase spending on cloud services, as government undertakes a major digital transformation initiative.
Detailing Cell C’s strategy and the business verticals the company is focusing on, Chris Lazarus, chief officer of sales, distribution and regions, said the foundation of the partnership is built on Cell C’s turnaround strategy, which has accelerated in the last few years.
The strategy included solidifying the network experience and choice, rebranding and modernisation of Cell C’s back-end systems, embracing cloud.
“In 2025, you’ll hear us speak about Cell C business and enterprise, which are fundamental strategic decisions we’re taking. We’ve decided that for us to remain only as a consumer play will not be the right play. We want to move into serving the business segment, which could be SMEs, large private companies, international companies, as well as government.
“We think there is an opportunity for us to not only play at the SIM level, but advance Cell C beyond mobile. That could be in enterprise connectivity, various areas of cloud, unified communications, security and digital transformation,” noted Lazarus.
“We’re excited about Cell C’s journey, not only the turnaround but the introduction of our capability in the enterprise space, which we’re referring to as Cell C Business.
“One of the reasons why this cloud partnership is important for us has to do with the ambitions of government…because there are so many projects of digitisation happening across government, in health, education, local municipalities, etc.
“Government realises it must make a jump and use technologies like the cloud and digital transformation to improve service delivery.”
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