Huawei Cloud: Enabling the leap to intelligence in Northern Africa with inclusive AI

Zawya

3 days ago

Cairo, Egypt: Huawei Cloud Summit Northern Africa was successfully concluded, gathering over 600 government and business leaders, alongside key ecosystem partners from more than 10 countries. The Summit served as a pivotal platform to envision the digital future of the region and explore strategic opportunities in leapfrog development.
Huawei Cloud has marked a year of significant growth since the official launch of its Egypt Region in 2024, which established Huawei Cloud as the first public cloud provider in Northern Africa. The past year has seen Huawei Cloud Northern Africa achieve a remarkable 140% growth, foster innovation with over 300 customers and 200 partners, and empower more than 15,000 developers to drive intelligent transformation across the region.
Dr. Khaled Abdel Ghaffar, Deputy Prime Minister for Human Development and Minister of Health and Population, stated during his speech at the opening of the summit that Egypt has placed great emphasis on investing in information technology, particularly in the establishment of large-scale data centers, with the aim of providing a secure environment for storing and analyzing vast volumes of information.
He explained that the digital infrastructure developed in Egypt over the past years has significantly facilitated data storage and management, especially in sectors such as health and education. He pointed out that the healthcare sector is one of the key beneficiaries due to the volume of medical data, as cloud computing enables secure and efficient storage while linking hospitals and radiology centers.
Dr. Amr Talaat, in a speech delivered on his behalf by Eng. Raafat Hindi, Deputy Minister of Communications and Information Technology for Infrastructure Development and Digital Transformation, affirmed that in addition to Egypt's digital wealth, it possesses an even more significant asset in its human resources, represented by its youth, entrepreneurs, and innovators. He noted that the state is exerting its utmost efforts to enhance their skills and capabilities, empowering and qualifying them to compete in the job market. He also highlighted the collaboration between the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology and Huawei in implementing several ministry initiatives focused on training young people from various qualifications and age groups.
Dr. Amr Talaat emphasized that this summit aligns with the state's efforts to build a digital Egypt and strengthen its position as a regional hub for innovation and digital transformation, while enhancing its technological infrastructure through partnerships with major global companies. He added that an ambitious strategy is being implemented to bolster Egypt's capabilities in cloud computing by developing a highly efficient computational infrastructure. Additionally, efforts are underway to provide an infrastructure that enables small and medium-sized enterprises and startups to leverage computational capabilities and artificial intelligence tools, relying on data centers located within Egypt.
"The current global AI technology transformation presents great opportunities for leapfrog development in Northern Africa," stated Jacqueline Shi, President of Huawei Cloud Global Marketing and Sales Service, in her keynote speech. "Huawei Cloud is committed to AI-centered innovation. We aim to lower the barrier for enterprises to use AI. We aim to provide you inclusive cloud and AI technologies that are accessible anywhere, highly cost-effective, and enhanced with industry know-how. We aim to assist countries across Northern Africa in building a intelligent cloud foundation for all industries to go intelligent."
Recognizing the concurrent opportunities presented by the rapid advancement towards a digital, intelligent, and low-carbon future, Huawei Cloud unveiled its "Five Inclusives" strategy. This comprehensive framework, encompassing inclusive connectivity, government services, education, security, and energy, leverages innovative technologies like cloud and AI to enable a leapfrog development for the region, making technological advancements affordable, accessible, intelligent, and secure to everyone.
The AI Pioneer with Technological Innovation and Deep Industry Expertise
Huawei Cloud is strategically focusing on key industries in Northern Africa, from government, carrier, finance, manufacturing, education, to e-commerce and retail, to accelerate their digital journey. Felix Feng, President of Huawei Cloud Northern Africa, outlined Huawei Cloud's three core strategic measures: 1) Enable customers to effectively deploy, use, and manage the cloud. 2) Integrate best practices from China and the globe with regional insights to deliver highly valuable, tailored industry solutions. 3) Provide advanced compute and AI development pipeline to empower local enterprises to become AI pioneers in their own industry.
Further solidifying Huawei Cloud's commitment to regional infrastructure, Jo Xu, General Manager of Huawei Cloud Egypt, announced the launch of a new availability zone (AZ) at the Huawei Cloud Cairo Region in 2026, promising enhanced, high-quality cloud services for customers across the region.
Juan Yong, Deputy Director of Huawei Cloud Global Solution Sales, unveiled Huawei Cloud's full-stack innovations, all centered on AI. For AI model and application development, ModelArts Studio, the Model as a Service (MaaS) platform, offers a full-process automated toolchain for out-of-the-box model development. Additionally, Huawei Cloud introduced an extensive array of AI-native cloud services such as GaussDB, CodeArts for one-stop DevSecOps, and MetaStudio for digital content production.
To address the stringent requirements of government and enterprise customers for security, reliability, and agility, Hu Hang, General Manager of Global Business at Huawei Hybrid Cloud, released Huawei Cloud Stack 8.5. This hybrid cloud solution provides over 120 out-of-the-box, locally deployed cloud services, meeting the growing demands for cutting-edge technologies like cloud native, data lake, and AI.
Strengthening the Ecosystem with Innovation for Sustainable Development
Huawei Cloud continues to uphold its "Cloud for Good" philosophy, leveraging cloud and AI technologies to benefit communities, the environment, and sustainable development. Dai Libin, Director of Huawei Cloud Marketing, showcased how Huawei's "Cloud for Good" initiative is transforming Egypt, spotlighting the impactful Startup Program. Take Intella, a trailblazing startup dedicated to crafting the world's most accurate Arabic speech-to-text engine. Leveraging Huawei Cloud's resources—including cloud vouchers, cutting-edge Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) technology, and ModelArts for one-stop AI development—Intella supercharged data training and model inference processes. Today, their Arabic model spans an impressive 25 dialects, setting new benchmarks in linguistic innovation.
In talent cultivation, Huawei Cloud has forged partnerships with the IT Industry Development Agency (ITIDA), National Telecommunication Institute (NTI), Information Technology Institute (ITI), and leading universities in Egypt. At today's Summit, a new program "Egypt Developers Community Appointment" was launched, which integrates cutting-edge knowledge in AI, cloud computing, 5G, and big data into university curricula, while offering training in soft skills and freelancing basics, thereby expanding career pathways for participants. A prime example of these talent efforts is Manetho, the champion of the Huawei Developer Competition Egypt 2024, whose AI-powered hieroglyphics translation app has significantly grown its user base, media exposure, and revenue after they won the competition. Manetho's app is currently in use at the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization and is slated for deployment at the Grand Egyptian Museum.
Looking ahead, Huawei Cloud reaffirms its commitment to collaborating with more customers and partners, accelerating the intelligent transformation of Northern Africa across education, government services, connectivity, and security.