Finance Minister urges Huawei to deepen internet access in rural areas

Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Mrs Zainab Ahmed has urged technological giants, Huawei to depend on rural access to internet to improve the value of the education sector.

She said the company should consider offering value addition and deepen rural access because the Nigerian education system has been negatively impacted by COVID-19 pandemic, just as she also urged them to help with affordable solutions that would guarantee digital value additions and accessibility to the Nigerian rural communities.

The minister stated this during a courtesy visit by Trevor Liu, Managing Director and Nigeria Representative of Huawei Technologies Company Nigeria Limited.

According to Ahmed, the education system has been most impacted by COVID-19 and only students and children in the cities have been able to have access to digital learning.

“A lot of our kids and students in the rural communities are not fortunate enough to plug into such platform,” She said. She, therefore, appealed and wished Huawei could look into the prospect of rural telephony.”

In his response, Liu told the minister that the company, which has been in existence since 1999, has been the number one information communication technology (ICT) solution supplier in Nigeria telecoms market.

He disclosed that the company slowed because the United States prevented Google from being on Huawei platform. Talking about how the company value its human capital, Liu said all their employees are shareholders, and that the company does not have too much foothold in China.

After China, according to him, Nigeria is the second country in the world that benefits from Huawei’s training. He said that the company, which is training-oriented, has been providing training with many Nigerian universities and communication companies, including MTN, GLO, and Airtel.

Highlighting Huawei’s contribution to Nigeria, Liu stated that while the total investment of the company in Nigeria is worth USD$76million, its procurement in the country between 2016 and 2019 is $630million. Their tax revenue generated within the period is $103million.

The company, according to him, has created over 400 direct job opportunities among whom Nigerians make up to 70 per cent.

‘In Huawei’s ICT partnership programme, the company has provided ICT training for its Nigerian partners, customers, converging over 900 engineers each year, while over 400 engineers have got the company’s authorised ICT certification. In its programme for government officers, Huawei trained 1000 government officers in ICT technology in 2019, this is apart from training 2000 youth in ICT in 2016, and training 1000 girls in 2014-2015 basic ICT,” he said.