Throughout its operations in Africa, Huawei has continuously launched a series of CSR initiatives in the continent thus fulfilling its commitment to act as a responsible corporate citizen and doing so in a practical and effective way. In the same time, Huawei, together with its African telecommunication operators, has built a comprehensive communication infrastructure, enriching the life of African people with the diversified communication services offered by the telecom companies.
Leadership in technology
Over the past few years, while the rapid evolution of the telecommunications industry has contributed significantly to the global economic growth, people in many developing countries with limited access to telecommunications services have seen only a widening of the digital gap between the developed and developing world. With its expertise and experience in telecommunications, Huawei is in a mission to address this economic and geographic imbalance by bridging the digital divide.
The company does so by creating competitive and customized telecommunications solutions to give people the opportunity to join the information society regardless of their income or geographic origin. In order to make this progress ongoing and sustainable, the quest is to provides support and train telecommunications experts, enhance their technological know-how of the industry, and drive telecommunications penetration in all of the countries in which it operates.
To elevate local telecommunication expertise, Huawei has set up 6 training centers in Africa that have produced a large number of technical experts for local communities and societies around the world. More than 12,000 students have graduated from these training centers. In addition, Huawei has also financially endowed education networks and provided equipment to projects in Ghana and many other countries. Through these efforts, Huawei as an institution hopes to educate and open up the world Africa.
Environment: Green Huawei, Green Communications, Green World
Environmental deterioration and accelerated global warming have become globally acknowledged critical issues for mankind. While evolving telecommunications technologies have made their contributions to reduced energy consumption and CO2 emissions notably from telephone calls and teleconferences that eliminate non-essential travel, the fact remains that energy savings and environmental protection by the telecommunications industry itself cannot be neglected.
Various statistics show that the annual CO2 emission from global ICT (information and communication technology) equipment has grown to 860 million tons, equaling that of the aviation industry. As a result, energy efficiency and environmental protection are inevitable responsibilities of the entire telecommunications industry.
Huawei, as a responsible corporate citizen, has taken the following key measures to promote environmental protection: Proactively developing new energy solutions and driving the use of reusable energy sources to reduce carbon emissions; Launching more convenient telecommunications services to reduce travel and streamline logistics for businesses; Mitigating the environmental impact of equipment manufacturing and logistics by implementing closed-looped management in sections of the supply chain; Rolling out energy-saving and emission reduction campaigns within the company to drive down per-capita energy use and its own carbon footprint.
Through these ongoing initiatives, Huawei hopes to achieve its goal of a “Green Huawei, Green Communications, and Green World".
Use of Renewable Energy
The most immediate way to reduce CO2 emissions in the telecommunications sector is by introducing renewable energy sources such as solar, wind and bio-fuels. These emission free or low-emission energies represent effective choices for telecommunications operators to reduce carbon emissions. The substantial decreases in the power consumption of telecommunications equipment have made it possible to adopt new energy sources as power supplies in the telecom industry.
Indeed Hawaii’s new energy solutions for telecommunication operators focus on the need for energy savings and emission reduction. An example of this is in the year 2008, when Huawei was granted commercial contracts by a number of operators in Africa that included the delivery of 200 solar-powered sites, making it one of the wireless solution providers with the most solar base station sites for that year. Other methods of energy efficient solutions include;
Solar solution; as a mature technology, solar energy has little negative impact on the environment, low maintenance requirements and high reliability.
Wind/solar solution; solar energy complemented by wind energy to accommodate different scenarios, such as daytime versus night and sunshine versus rain, protects the power supply and improves system reliability.
Solar/diesel solution; a solar/diesel solution, which complements the solar solution with a diesel generator as backup, is able to supply power regardless of cloudy or rainy days or volatile sunshine peaks in different months.
Society- Social Contributions
The telecommunications network solutions provider places a priority on giving back to the countries and regions in which it is involved by contributing to all aspects of development including the local economy, technology, sanitation, and disaster relief. The latter commitment was reflected in the telecommunications restoration work Huawei carried out in 2008 following the Algerian flood. Elsewhere the companies’ social programs have seen it conduct activities in Africa aiming to help improve local educational and technological levels while aiding vulnerable groups. In doing this, the company remains committed to contributing to the welfare of communities on a local level as well as fulfilling its responsibility as a good corporate citizen.
Investing and growing with Africa
As a partner in the sustainable development of Africa, Huawei firmly believes in localizing its global operations with local management, local hiring, local partners and local R&D. Internationally it has achieved a local hiring rate of 57% of employees. "Investing in Africa, Serving Africa" has been the overarching principle for its operations in the continent.
In doing so the company has established branch offices in more than 40 African countries, and has invested locally to build sales and service offices, training centers, technical support centers and manufacturing facilities, creating a significant number of jobs for the local community. Such a strategy helps deepen its understanding of the local market, and drives local employment and economic growth.
In Africa, Huawei has a long-term strategic plan to invest in the continent, which will cover social responsibility, environmental awareness, technology education and knowledge transfer as well as enriching the lives of Africans through communication
End.
For more information go to www.huawei.com
|
John Muthee