DCDT and Huawei partner for women’s skills development

DCDT Group

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Huawei South Africa has partnered with the Department of Communications and Digital Technologies to deliver a tailor-made 5G course to the department’s women staff.

The training is an extension of the DCDT’s Women’s Month initiative that aims to expose female employees to various technologies and solutions that will enable the digital transformation envisaged by the fourth industrial revolution, commonly referred to as '4IR'.

Deputy Minister Pinky Kekana attended and addressed delegates on the importance of skilling and re-skilling women in the ICT space. The Deputy Minister went on to say: “In our effort to build a capable 4IR army, we strongly believe in the ongoing development of our employees. We want to learn from leaders in the ICT sector and be trained by them. It is important for us, as women, to understand what 4IR technologies are and what changes they will bring to our lives.”

Deputy Minister Pinky Kekana

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Huawei COO Christina Naidoo also stressed the importance of women taking a bigger role in ICT as the industry embraces the digital era.

“The technology space is essentially about innovation – creating and developing new solutions to improve people’s lives. We will only be able to do this optimally when women are intimately involved in the innovation process.”

The group of 50 women, ranging from administrative to executive levels, underwent training in 5G technology and business use cases. They also attended talks on IOT, cloud and FTTX (fibre to the X) and were presented with a certificate from the Huawei Learning Centre.

Department of Communications Acting Director General Nomvuyiso Batyi said: “The DCDT is committed to ensuring that there is digital inclusion, especially taking into account the interests of women. This training includes some of the initiatives by Minister Stella Ndabeni Abrahams to ensure that employees are equipped with the necessary skills to develop policies and legislative frameworks suitable for South Africa.”

Huawei has committed to training 6 000 students and industry professionals in 4IR technologies of 5G, AI, cloud and big data with online and face-to-face training platforms.