President Chakwera seeks more opportunities in China

President Lazarus Chakwera has hailed Huawei Technologies for being a valuable partner in building Malawi’s digital capacity across overlapping sectors via groundbreaking innovations in e-government, e-health and e-learning among others.

The President made these remarks on Tuesday morning during a meeting with the Technical Management Team of Huawei Technologies led by Vice President Li Junfeng in Beijing, China.

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Chakwera said Malawi had significantly benefited from the exceptional services that Huawei provides through its cutting-edge solutions ranging from smart devices to advanced digital solutions.

“My administration is also keen on collaborating with Huawei in several specific areas of Smart Village Initiative for rural communities including the establishment of technical training centers for ICT to help us upskill our youth in digital skills, AI and cybersecurity, Smart agriculture solutions to support our large-scale farm initiatives, and Cybersecurity for Malawi’s digital landscape,” said Chakwera.

The President also reiterated his administration’s unwavering commitment to the minigrid project as Malawi seeks to expand electricity access across the country saying he would be exploring financing opportunities to scale it based on the results of feasibility studies that identify numerous eligible areas across the country.

Furthermore, the president expressed pride to have inaugurated Malawi’s first State-of-the-Art National Data Centre in the city of Blantyre this year, owing to the successful execution of the Fiber Backbone Project by Huawei which helped to position Malawi on the global digitalization map, on par with highly developed nations.

In an interview with the Malawi News Agency (Mana), Huawei Technologies Managing Director for Malawi, Gomez Gu, indicated his company was geared to support Malawi in digitalisation, providing power through microgrids solutions, especially for rural areas and computing.

On his part, Information Minister Moses Kunkuyu disclosed that government will soon launch the first Smart Villages project in villages, which will help increase the number of smart villages in Malawi thereby increasing access to connectivity and various online services in rural areas.

The meeting was a continuation of President Chakwera’s engagement with various Chinese Companies including Huawei on the sidelines of the Summit of Forum of China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) that runs from Wednesday up to Friday.