Hover Gao, President of Huawei Sub-Saharan Africa.
Image: Supplied
At AfricaCom 2025, Huawei laid out an aggressive, fibre-first blueprint for Africa’s digital future, one that treats broadband less like a utility and more like the continent’s next big innovation platform.
Cape Town is no stranger to bold digital proclamations, but the message emerging from Huawei’s presence at AfricaCom this year was unusually clear: for Africa to participate in the AI era, it must overhaul its digital foundations. And that means fibre, deep, ubiquitous, and intelligent.
Across ministerial forums, engineering sessions, and operator roundtables, Huawei executives pushed a narrative that broadband is no longer optional development infrastructure. If roads fuel commerce, Huawei argues, fibre will power intelligent economies, providing the capacity needed for AI, cloud, and hyper-connected services that are beginning to reshape global competitiveness.
Hover Gao, President of Huawei Sub-Saharan Africa, framed AI as “the defining trend of our time,” but emphasised that Africa cannot simply adopt AI tools, it needs the computational backbone to run them.
With the African Union and more than a dozen individual countries publishing national AI strategies, the ambition is growing.
By 2030, AI could contribute up to 6% of Africa’s GDP. But the infrastructure gap is still the continent’s biggest barrier. Demand for computing power, Huawei notes, may grow at more than twice the global rate.
To close the gap, Huawei is pushing a continent-wide strategy: build computing capacity, scale fibre networks, and cultivate local AI talent and ecosystems.
At its Mobile Broadband Solutions Africa Forum, the company introduced five new innovations for the African 5G market, aimed not just at boosting network speed, but at supporting new business models and improving energy efficiency.
But the real shift is happening beneath the surface. Huawei showcased AI-driven network management tools that can automatically detect congestion, reallocate bandwidth in real time, and reduce power consumption without degrading service.
In an environment where operators struggle with high operational costs and unpredictable energy grids, AI-run networks could be a transformative lever.
Huawei FTTR & SME demonstration site during AfricaCom.
Image: Supplied
In a Cape Town demonstration home, Huawei showed what the future could look like when fibre runs not just to the doorstep but to every room. Visitors walked through seamless Wi-Fi zones, cloud gaming demos, high-definition streaming, and a home office setup that stayed stable even under heavy load.
For small businesses—from township salons to guesthouses—this “FTTR” model enables an always-on digital backbone that can integrate point-of-sale systems, cloud tools, security cameras, and more.
Huawei also announced a Southern Africa FTTx Planning & Design Service Center, staffed with over 100 specialists. The goal: accelerate fibre deployment, standardize best practices, and help operators plan high-density fibre networks tailored to African cities and informal settlements.
At cloud and data-center roundtables, the company pitched next-generation architectures combining cloud computing, big data, and AI to optimise cost structures and unlock new digital business models. Huawei sees data centers, not mobile phones as the quiet engines of Africa’s AI economy.
FAST COMPANY (SA)