At this year’s GITEX Global, Huawei showcased its vision of an ‘All Intelligence’ future – where AI goes beyond connectivity to drive industry transformation, empower smart cities and support national digital sovereignty. From accelerating intelligent cloud adoption to nurturing local ICT talent and advancing sustainability through AI-driven energy efficiency, Huawei is helping the Middle East move from experimentation to acceleration, positioning the region at the forefront of global digital innovation. Safder Nazir, Senior Vice President, Public Sector at Huawei Enterprise Middle East and Central Asia, tells us more.
This year’s GITEX theme captured Huawei’s vision of an AI-driven world. From your perspective, what does ‘All Intelligence’ really mean for this region and how is Huawei bringing it to life?
‘All Intelligence’ for us means moving from purely connectivity to transforming industries using AI and some of the more advanced technologies.
On the booth, we showcased over 80 solutions, featuring our key products and portfolios. We also launched over 20 new industry solutions and 30 different SME-focused products which allows them to use technology in a rapid way.
There’s also the Partner Park which is where we work with industry specific partners to deliver our solutions to customers in their local markets.
Smart City technologies are rapidly evolving. What’s your perspective on the potential of these technologies to unlock new business opportunities and drive economic growth across the region?
Firstly, let’s break down the two typical types of cities: greenfield and brownfield. Greenfield cities are new developments – of which there are lots across the region – whereas brownfield cities are looking to transform and upgrade.
We have a mix of both in the Middle East. In Dubai, for example, there are new districts being developed, as well as existing parts of the city being improved.
If we look at the trajectory of smart cities over the last 20 years, we’ve gone from talking about digital cities to smart cities to cognitive cities and maybe in the future, we’ll have autonomous cities.
Each of these has come along with a key technology transition. For instance, 20 years ago when we started talking about digital cities, the key technology transition was a move towards broadband Internet.
Smart City conversations were driven by the mass adoption of IoT. M2M existed for a long time, but IoT was about the mass adoption and having the ability to understand what’s happening in the real world in real time.
As AI has come to the fore, we start hearing about cognitive cities which is a case of integrating AI into the city.
I believe in the future, we’ll see more of what I’d call autonomous cities with the use of Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLT) and AI agents.
Huawei Cloud is positioned as an AI pioneer in industries. Can you share how it’s helping governments and enterprises in the region accelerate their intelligent transformation?
We see Huawei Cloud as not just being cloud-native but being AI-native. That means we can help customers deliver cloud sovereignty and AI sovereignty in-country. We believe this is key for every country to be able to adopt AI which is tailored to their own countries, languages, cultures and so on.
This is the direction countries will head in and we provide the solid foundation for them to be able to achieve that. However, we must recognise that not every country is transforming at the same pace.
I recently took part in a roundtable discussion about national cloud sovereignty and AI sovereignty, and we see countries from across the region – be it Africa, Middle East or Central Asia – all at different stages.
Despite this, the overall vision is heading in the same direction. Our direction of travel is moving towards how AI is used.
We’re aiming to shorten the gap between experimentation and acceleration – and that’s how Huawei is uniquely positioned.
Huawei has been recognised for developing local ICT talent. What are the latest initiatives you’re leading to grow that ecosystem further?
Talent is the foundation of Digital Transformation and the right type of talent combined with the right skillset is what’s needed.
What is unique about this region is its youth population. Pakistan for instance has an average age of approximately 26 and is the fifth largest population in the world.
Similarly, across the region, whether in the UAE or Saudi Arabia, there’s a very large youth population.
This can be advantageous because the younger generation tend to adopt technology more natively than the older generation. We’ve got to be able to enable that talent with the right type of tools and this is where Huawei comes in.
It’s now our 10th year of our ICT talent development programme and we’ve already had 200,000 students join. We have a 1,000,000 digital talents programme which will now include AI, cybersecurity and cloud technologies.
We’re seeing increasing overlap between AI, ICT technologies and sustainability. How is Huawei helping countries achieve both digital and environmental goals?
Huawei has many capabilities – we are the largest provider of solar inverters in the world and have been for several years.
We’ve also achieved the largest deployment of battery storage in the Red Sea project and it is a very well-known project in the region. This is driving a fully renewable powered city or development.
Not only that, we have targets for our R&D across our products to reduce the energy consumption and carbon footprint and we’re using AI as part of this.
Besides reducing the power of our own products, we’re then able to deploy solutions for our customers, including something we call the Net Zero Campus.
The Net Zero Campus is a unique solution from Huawei that we partnered on a couple of years ago with Masdar City here in the UAE, where we’re reducing the power consumption of the ICT network.
Frankly speaking, if we wanted to have no energy consumption, we’d just turn everything off – but we don’t want to live like that. Instead, we must consider how to achieve that quality of life with advanced technology using the least amount of energy and carbon footprint.
In our wireless networks now and across our network portfolio, we’re able to manage that and see how much energy is being consumed in near real time, including the carbon footprint.
We’re using advanced AI algorithms, such as the tidal flow algorithm, to typically reduce about 30% of the overall energy consumption of a network in a significantly sized campus.
If you think about any campus or rooftop space, you’ve got limited area, but if you can generate more power from the same area, then you can offset your amount of consumption.
These two elements are what Huawei is able to address, plus with the battery storage it means you’ve got a better chance of achieving a net zero target.
Do you have any parting thoughts you’d like to add?
Over the last several years, we’ve seen tremendous transformation across the region and we see the Middle East as an early adopter.
However, it’s one thing being an early adopter, but it’s moving from experimentation to adoption to acceleration which is transforming the way we work using technology. That’s why I believe this region is well positioned to lead the world in the adoption of the latest technologies and for the advancement of society.
