Speaking at Kamuzu Palace in Lilongwe when Chinese Ambassador to Malawi Shi Ting Wang and officials from Huawei technologies briefed the President on the soon to be launched national fibre backbone project, Mutharika said the world today depends on connectivity for almost everything and that this project is a great opportunity for Malawi.
He therefore called on the private sector to invest in information and communication technology for the country to move forward.
“Every sector relies on ICT, talk of distance learning to support education, tele-medicine to support health care in rural areas and provide weather forecast and new farming techniques, all depends on the Internet,” said Mutharika.
He said all sectors from banking to transport, health, electricity, agriculture among others rely on ICT as it has become a way of life.
In his remarks, Shi Ting said the optic fibre network will be launched and his government through the Ministry of Information, Communication and Technology and the Huawei Company are working tirelessly to reach the highest level with ICT.
He further said the current generation is in the modern age of Internet which is very important, and Wang believes that the project will play a vital role for the development of Malawi and transform it.
“It will increase people’s access to Internet and will increase the speed of the Internet and will also increase the connection for Malawi to the outside world at the same time it will be cheaper and reduce the cost to access Internet,” said Shi Ting.
He said Malawians will benefit from the project in different ways.
Wan Wei, Country Director for Huawei Malawi said in the past 11 years in Malawi, Huawei has been thriving thick and thin with Malawi, never retrieves even at the worst economic depression time.
He said localized operation is the key to Huawei’s fast growth in overseas markets.
Currently, Huawei has a number of employees in Malawi, and over 50% of them are locally recruited.
“As a collaborative industry contributor, we have been prioritizing partnership to local suppliers to create more job opportunities, downstream and have extensively co-operated with more than 50 local suppliers to seek win-win development,” explained Wan.
According to Huawei Country Director, Huawei is a leading global information and communications technology (ICT) solutions provider and aims to create an open , collaborative, win-win industry ecosystem that promotes shared success, and provide end users with an experience that is Real-time , On-demand , All-online, DIY, and social.
