Chinese tech giant Huawei has once again positioned itself at the forefront of Africa’s digital transformation with its 2025 Huawei Intelligent Finance Summit, held in Johannesburg. The summit brought together banking executives, fintech innovators, and policymakers from across the continent, all focused on reimagining Africa’s financial sector through cutting-edge digital technologies. The company unveiled its strategic vision for transforming Africa’s financial services through mobile-first and AI-powered solutions. The summit emphasized Huawei’s commitment to advancing financial inclusion and digital innovation across the continent.
Victor Guo, President of Huawei Sub-Saharan Africa Enterprise Business, highlighted the role of technology in enhancing financial inclusion. He noted that increased smartphone adoption and economic activity are driving the growth of banking services in Africa. Guo stated, “We have worked across sectors to accelerate rapid development of inclusive finance and dramatically decrease the rate of unbanked people in Sub-Saharan Africa.” He cited Huawei’s collaboration with Safaricom in Kenya to launch M-PESA, a mobile money service that enables over 34 million East Africans to access financial services via their phones.
Jason Cao, CEO of Huawei Digital Finance Business Unit, addressed the challenges of digitization in his keynote speech. He introduced Huawei’s R-A-A-S (Reliability, Availability, Autonomy, and Security) framework designed to support financial institutions in building resilient, mobile-first services. Cao emphasized the importance of reliability and availability in preventing data loss and minimizing service interruptions. He remarked, “Reliability is still a big issue, and this is not just for the banks in emerging countries. Even in Singapore or in Europe, a lot of outages still happen, and that’s because the banking industry has a huge technology burden.”
“Huawei has ensured that African enterprises are well catered for with three availability zones in South Africa and a full cloud stack launched in 2024, which provides more than 100 cloud services with zero major outages in the past year.” Roc Bai, Vice President of Huawei Cloud Sub-Saharan Africa noted.
One of the key moments at the summit was a panel discussion featuring award-winning futurist and author Brett King and industry leaders who discussed challenges facing financial services in Africa, as well as approaches that can lead to lasting solutions to them.
The summit also featured discussions on the integration of AI into financial services. Experts highlighted how AI can enhance customer experiences, streamline operations, and improve risk management. Huawei’s initiatives aim to support financial institutions in adopting AI technologies to meet the evolving needs of their customers.
Huawei’s efforts align with China’s broader goals of fostering a global community with a shared future. By promoting digital transformation and financial inclusion in Africa, Huawei contributes to building a more connected and equitable global economy.
The Huawei Intelligent Finance Summit 2025 underscored the company’s dedication to empowering Africa’s financial sector through innovative technologies and strategic partnerships.
