Huawei and MTN Group signed a memorandum of understanding at MWC Barcelona to strengthen strategic cooperation in environmental, social and governance matters. This agreement is aligned with MTN’s Ambition 2025 strategy and Huawei’s Corporate Sustainability Development strategy, including its TECH4ALL initiative.
The Huawei DigiTruck provides free training in digital skills for those in need, including rural communities, the elderly, the unemployed, and girls and women in particular. Converted from a used shipping container mounted on a truck, the DigiTruck is a solar-powered mobile classroom equipped with laptops, smartphones and 4G connectivity.
It is complemented by the Huawei ICT Academy, which trains university students in ICT skills such as 5G, cloud computing and AI. There are 1,900 Huawei ICT Academies in 110 countries, serving around 150,000 students a year. MTN’s Skills Academy seeks to enhance the link between digital skills training and demand for jobs to ensure that people across the continent are producers, consumers and innovators of digital technologies.
With a significant portion of Africa’s population living in rural areas, MTN is committed to expanding the network to underserved communities and reaching a target of 95% rural broadband coverage by 2025. The partnership with Huawei will support the achievement of this target as well as our approach to expanding the number of collaborations and the types of partnership models we follow.
MTN and Huawei are collaborating on deploying RuralStar, an affordable connectivity solution for providing online access to remote and rural communities. The solution overcomes traditional barriers that make network connectivity in such scenarios unviable for carriers. The parties will extend their collaboration following the completion of the first RuralStar proof-of-concept in Ghana in 2017.
In terms of reducing carbon emissions, Huawei will support MTN's commitment to minimize the impact on the planet and achieve net zero by 2040. The partners will work on decarbonizing MTN’s telecommunications infrastructure, which spans radio access network (RAN) sites, transport networks, storage and data centers. Network decarbonization will be done via a mix of energy efficiency technologies and the application of innovative green solutions.
