Guinea Explores Digital Transformation in Collaboration with Huawei
On 6 December 2024, the Guinean Minister of Post, Telecommunications and Digital Economy Mrs Rose Pricemou received a delegation from Huawei represented by its West Africa Regional Director August Dong and the Huawei Guinea MD Wang Rui.
The two sides explored how to enhance cooperation in order to accelerate the #DigitalTransformation of Guinea. Huawei proposed the following solutions as follows:
- Deployment of 5G,
- Provisioning of innovative solutions such as EdTech, eHealth and eGov, and
- Expansion of national fiber optic backbone
At the onset, Minister Pricemou commended the commitment of Huawei for bringing technological advances to her country. She also expressed her appreciation for #CapacityBuilding provided by Huawei to facilitate the transfer of knowledge.
According to the UN report on “eGovernment Survey 2024: Accelerating Digital Transformation for Sustainable Development“, Guinea ranks 29th in Africa with a score of 0.4006 on a scale of 0 to 1 in terms of development of eGovernance Digital Initiative (#EGDI). This puts Guinea below the average of the African continent at 0.4247 and the world at 0.6382, highlighting a #DigitalDivide that needs to be addressed.
Similarly, accordingly to the ITU report on “Global Security Index 2024”, Guinea is categorized as a Tier-3 country ‘demonstrating a basic commitment towards cybersecurity.’ Guinea scores 56.39 out of 100 on the Cybersecurity Index and has a lot of room for improvement.
In the same vein, a joint study by the International Society for Finance (ISF) and Google projected that the #DigitalEconomy in Africa will be worth at least USD 712 billion by 20250, representing 8.5% of the continental GDP.
It is to be recalled that in August 2024, Huawei inked a Strategic Cooperation for Digital Transformation MoU with the Ministry of Post, Telecommunications and Digital Economy during a visit of a delegation from the said ministry at the Huawei HQ in Shenzhen. Thus, the visit by the Regional Director falls within the context of the MoU with a view to implement mutually agreeable projects..
It is worth noting that Guinea is host to the headquarters for the West Africa Backbone Organisation as from the 5th of December 2024. As such, Guinea ambitions to play a leading in promoting #DigitalConnectivity and #BroadbandAccess in the region.
Aware of the need to address the digital gap, Guinea is willing to discuss cooperation with a view to promote the #DigitalEconomy with #ICT solution providers. Guinea hopes that innovative models of cooperation such as Public-Private Partnership (PPP) could be considered to achieve a win-win situation.