Planting new seeds to grow digital skills

“Seeds for the Future” is a global talent program Huawei launched 15 years ago to train young engineers and, more broadly, to make young people more resilient by helping them better understand tech.

In the real world, success is not guaranteed; you have to earn it. In a recent interview with Transform, former UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova said that education is about giving hope.

I agree completely. And getting the right education is often the key to success.

As a major player in the technology sector, Huawei feels a responsibility to educate young people around the world by giving them the technology skills they need to succeed.

By the end of 2022, Huawei’s global ICT talent development efforts had benefited as many as 2.2 million people in over 150 countries. Reaching this milestone is concrete proof that we’re fulfilling our promise to invest US$150 million in digital talent development before 2026. And it encourages us to do more on a greater scale.

Recently, we launched an expanded SEEDS talent framework, a new set of principles that will guide our worldwide talent cultivation programs. SEEDS will now stand for Surpass, Exploration, Employability, Daring to challenge, and Sustainability.

Surpass
With Surpass, we aim to foster leadership. We offer a number of programs to help participants cultivate their ability to lead.  

I can offer two examples. In 2022, Huawei held three sessions of its flagship European Leadership Academy program. I attended one session at the Women’s Academy for Rural Innovation, along with 15 students. I was amazed by their energy, and how our training helps them shine brighter.

Second, in recent years, we have trained about 180,000 people from Indonesia, Thailand, and Malaysia at the Huawei ASEAN Academy.

Exploration
Selecting the right career path, adapting to changes, and continuing to grow are critical for fresh university graduates. Our Seeds for the Future and ICT Academy programs help thousands of students worldwide explore new life paths, strengthen their digital skills, and form friendships that last throughout their careers.

In our initial version of the Seeds for the Future program, we partnered with over 500 universities and helped more than 15,000 students in over 130 countries. By the end of 2022, we had partnered with more than 2,200 universities to establish ICT Academies that train more than 200,000 students each year in the fields of AI, telecommunications, and cloud technology.

Employability
We provide online education to ICT professionals so they can stay competitive in the job market long after they finish their studies. The programs enable participants from various technical fields to obtain certifications and gain experience with new technologies. One particular aspect is “Train the Trainers,” which focuses on keeping the knowledge of ICT teachers up-to-date.

Huawei Cloud Developer Institute offers many online ICT training courses to entrepreneurs around the world. More importantly, we award Huawei Career Certifications, showing that trainees have obtained certain skills, boosting their employability in the ICT industry.

Daring to Challenge
We organize and sponsor a wide range of tech competitions worldwide, some of which involve solving real-world problems. Competing encourages university and high school students to obtain cutting-edge industry knowledge in a fun way.

Huawei was honored to be the Diamond sponsor of the International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) for the fifth time in 2023. Our own Tech Arena competitions are also booming in Europe, with more than 1,000 student contestants participating in 2022.

Sustainability
Although technology plays an increasingly central role in our lives, many people don’t use it—either because they lack the skills, or because they don’t have access to devices.

We try to bridge this digital divide by offering basic tech training to women and men of all ages. Among Huawei’s many signature projects promoting sustainability, two stand out: our digital bus project and our Women in Tech initiative.

In Thailand, Huawei’s digital bus is bringing modern equipment and educational resources to rural parts of the country, helping children gain p-to-date ICT knowledge. In France, these buses teach the elderly how to use ICT devices to make their lives easier.

Huawei believes women are at the core  of the digital age. To amplify their contributions, we offer scholarships, training, and leadership programs to cultivate participation and leadership for women in the tech industry.

In Ghana, for example, Huawei has partnered with the Rebecca Foundation, a non-profit in Ghana, and local governments to offer ICT skills training to 100,000 students and traders. In the past two years, more than 70,000 Ghanaian women have benefited from this initiative.

For the past two years in Ireland, Huawei has supported more than 100 top Seeds graduates for their great tech ideas. Last year, a winning team designed a tech solution to make it easier for wheelchair users to travel by train. The project reflects Huawei’s philosophy of using tech for good. 

We have also been forming strong bonds with UNESCO to improve global ICT talent education. This year, we will join the Global Alliance for Literacy, a key project run by the UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning. The main focus will be on providing ICT skills to adults.

By now, it should be clear that Huawei is committed to dedicating resources to fostering talent. We sincerely hope young people never stop exploring, never stop learning, never stop challenging, and never stop growing.