Huawei South Africa has announced its $5.8 million (R100-million) Cloud Spark programme which the company claims will support more than 1,000 small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) over the next 3 years.
Cloud Spark is a hybrid accelerator programme for tech startups and SMEs. The company plans to partner with Silicon Cape, a non-profit and community-driven initiative that supports and catalyses the creation of a sustainable tech and entrepreneurial ecosystem in South Africa for the implementation of the programme.
Jay Zhou, the managing director of Huawei Cloud South Africa, made the announcement at the Huawei Eco-Connect event held last week at the Sandton Convention Center in Johannesburg.
According to Stone He, president of the Huawei Cloud Business in Southern Africa, the initiative will empower startups as they grow their businesses through the adoption of the cloud, helping to accelerate their digitalisation ambitions.
The Cloud Spark programme, together with the announcement of a data centre availability zone (AZ), which is set to go live 3 years ahead of schedule, is part of Huawei Cloud’s everything-as-a-service approach, which is being adopted locally and globally by the company.
Zhou explained that the everything-as-a-service approach brings together traditional cloud offerings such as infrastructure-as-a-service, technology-as-a-service, and expertise-as-a-service which are crucial to meeting the future head-on.
