Second Annual Huawei Central Asian Innovation Day: Build a digital Central Asia and move towards the intelligent world
[Tashkent, September 25, 2018] The Second Huawei Central Asian Innovation Day was held in Tashkent today. Co-hosted by Huawei and the Development Strategy Center, the theme of this year's event is "Innovate for a Digital Central Asia". Nearly 200 attendees from governments, industry, and academia gathered together to explore how digital infrastructure accelerates the growth of digital economy, enriches life, drives innovation, and helps cultivate an ecosystem of shared success.
As one of the most vibrant emerging markets in the world, the Central Asia region faces a tidal wave of industry digitalization, with a digital economy that's progressing by leaps and bounds every day. At the event, Akmal Burkhanov, Director of the Development Strategy Center of Uzbekistan, delivered a keynote speech.
“The Huawei Innovation Day is very timely and useful for Uzbekistan, as the country has developed a Strategy of Innovative Development 2019-2021 and the ‘road map’ on its implementation, as recently approved by President Shavkat Mirziyoyev,. The key objective of the Strategy is "to develop human resources as the main factor that determines the level of the country's competitiveness in the world arena, and its innovative progress". Another goal of the Strategy is to ensure Uzbekistan’s ranking among 50 advanced countries of the Global Innovation Index rating by 2030. Due to the lack of many indicators and "ineffective coordination of work in this direction," the country has been standing apart the rating in recent years. With this in mind, we hope that today's meeting of distinguished guests, decision-makers and professionals, your recommendations and proposals, ideas on the joint projects, will give a powerful impetus to the breakthrough innovative development of both Uzbekistan and the entire Central Asian region as a whole”, - stated Mr. Burkhanov.
Mr. Victor Zhang, Senior Vice President of Huawei, followed with a keynote with suggestions for the digital transformation in Central Asia. He said, that Central Asian countries need to strengthen telecommunications infrastructure, including fixed broadband and mobile broadband, fully encourage the development of application software (OTT), allow room for plenty of failure in various industries, regulators should develop more tolerant policies to stimulate investment, encourage simultaneous development of operator’s MBB and OTT.
He added, that the digitalization of advantageous industries is the key. Countries should give priority to the industries with comparative advantages defined by various countries such as tourism and transportation. Finally, he called on countries to achieve the digitalization of government affairs for the first step, lay the foundation for the smart government, and then gradually move toward urban brain management. In these areas, Huawei is willing to work with local operators and application partners, seeking the best solutions.
Huawei Innovation Day has become a high-end dialogue platform for key stakeholders in Central Asia's digital ecosystem. This year's event gathered top government officials in the region, including representatives of Uzbekistan ICT Ministry, Minister of Innovative Development of Uzbekistan Mr. Ibrokhim Abdurakhmanov, vice-Minister of Information and Communications of Kazakhstan, Dinara Shcheglova, first deputy Chairman of the Communication Service of Tajikistan Ilhomjon Atoev.
At non-official roundtable following the event, they gathered to discuss the role of government in digital transformation and share best practices.
In order to support the development of Uzbekistan digital economy, Huawei and Tashkent University of Information Technology jointly released the “ICT thousand talents training program in Uzbekistan” on Innovation Day – over the next three years, Huawei will cooperate with the university to train 1000 ICT young talents in Uzbekistan through online training, “Seed for the future” project, to support e-government, communications infrastructure, cloud computing, industry digitalization and other fields, to develop a solid talent base for Uzbekistan to achieve innovative development and build a digital economy.
Many speakers joined the event to share their ideas on building out the digital ecosystem. Specifically, they talked about policy and regulation, digital transformation of industries, AI unicorns, and how ICT will enable the development of future generations, including RCC, Moscow School of Management SKOLKOVO, Chinese company YITU Technology, Yi-hualu and representatives of Uzbekistan Gas and Oil industry, telecom operators.
Starting in 2013, Huawei Innovation Days have been held in London, Milan, Munich, Paris, Singapore, Sydney, Kuala Lumpur, Dubai, and Sao Paulo. Huawei advocates openness, innovation, collaboration, and shared success, and is committed to bringing digital to every person, home and organization for a fully connected, intelligent world
