MTN and Huawei Sign MoU on Improving Digital Inclusion and Sustainable Development in Africa

MTN Group and Huawei signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on February 27 at MWC Barcelona 2023 to strengthen strategic cooperation in the field of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG).

MTN Group Chief Operating Officer Jens Schulte-Bockum said, “We feel that everybody deserves to be connected to the benefits of the modern world, and we can only achieve that if we go deep into the rural areas of our countries. That is at the core of our ambition as a company. Let’s innovate together, and let’s stay strong together.”

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The MoU is aligned with MTN’s business strategy Ambition 2025 and Huawei’s Corporate Sustainability Development (CSD) strategy, including its TECH4ALL initiative.

“We believe that digital technology will become an important force driving social development and making the world more inclusive and sustainable,” said Guo Ping, Chairman of the Huawei Supervisory Board.

In the area of digital skills training, the Huawei DigiTruck project provides free training for those most in need, including people in rural communities, the elderly, unemployed youth, and girls and women. Converted from a used shipping container mounted on a truck, DigiTruck is a solar-powered mobile classroom equipped with laptops, smartphones, and 4G connectivity.

A second project for enhancing digital skills is Huawei ICT Academy, which trains university students in ICT skills such as 5G, cloud computing, and AI. There are currently 1,900 Huawei ICT Academies in 110 countries, serving around 150,000 students a year.

MTN’s Skills Academy seeks to boost the link between digital skills training and job market requirements to benefit producers, consumers, and innovators of digital technologies. The partnership with Huawei seeks to accelerate efforts to reach even more rural and remote communities and broaden the portfolio of available digital skills training.

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With a significant portion of Africa’s population living in rural areas, MTN is committed to expanding its network to underserved communities and has set a target of 95% rural broadband coverage by 2025. MTN’s partnership with Huawei gets the company closer to its goal. The company intends to expand the number of collaborations and the types of partnership models it has in place.

MTN and Huawei are collaborating on deploying RuralStar, an affordable connectivity solution for providing online access to remote and rural communities. The solution overcomes traditional barriers that make network connectivity in such scenarios unviable for carriers, and will extend collaboration between the partners, following the completion of the world’s first RuralStar proof-of-concept in Ghana in 2017.

In terms of reducing carbon emissions, Huawei will support MTN’s commitment to minimizing its impact on the planet and achieving net zero by 2040. The partners will work on decarbonizing the operator’s telecommunications infrastructure, spanning Radio Access Network (RAN) sites, transport networks, storage, and data centers. The achievement of network decarbonization will be done via a mix of energy efficiency technologies and the application of innovative green solutions.

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