The announcement was made at the Huawei Cloud Summit Egypt 2024 held in Cairo in the presence of Egypt’s Minister of Information and Communication Technology Amr Talaat.

The launch of the Cairo Region brings Huawei’s total number of cloud regions worldwide to 33.

Each cloud region refers to the physical locations where Huawei deploys data centres to deliver cloud services to customers, according to the Chinese company.

The launch of this cloud region comes shortly after Egypt inaugurated its first-of-a-kind government data and cloud computing centre on Ain Sokhna Road.

The Cairo Region is meant to provide innovative, reliable, secure, and flexible cloud services to individuals, corporate and government users and serve as important digital infrastructure.

“Startups and SMEs are key target beneficiaries of this service, as well as the private sector and students in schools and universities,” Jacqueline Shi, president of global marketing and sales services at Huawei Cloud, told Ahram Online during the event.

The services the cloud provides include the DataArts data governance pipeline including the GaussDB database, and the ModelArts AI development pipeline.

“With the Cairo Region, we are bringing our most innovative technologies to the country to further support Egypt to unlock the potential of digital transformation. Furthermore, the launch of the Cairo Region is an important step in Huawei Cloud being able to enhance our services to customers across 28 African countries such as Egypt, Ethiopia, and Algeria,” Shi stated.

Arabic LLMs
 

During the event, Huawei Cloud released a new Arabic large language model (LLM) to support companies in the region with the digital transformation of vertical industries.

The automatic speech recognition (ASR) service supports functions covering over 20 Arabic-speaking countries, with an accuracy rate reaching 96 percent. It is the first 100-billion AI-powered parameter Arabic LLM.

The model has been trained with native Arabic data to ensure an accurate understanding of the local culture, history, knowledge customs, and more of the Arab world. As an important part of Huawei Cloud’s Pangu model’s endeavor to support vertical industries with AI capabilities, the training of the model is based on industry datasets covering digital power, oil and gas, and finance among other areas.

A few months ago, Huawei announced its intention to invest $300 million to establish the first public cloud region in Egypt, offering over 200 cloud services including AI platforms, data platforms, and development platforms.

During the event, Huawei announced it will invest $200 million to support 200 local software partners, to empower 1,300 channel partners, and build a prosperous local software and application ecosystem.

On the regional level, Huawei intends to invest $30 million to train 10,000 local developers and educate 100,000 digital professionals, to drive intelligent transformation in the region.

Moreover, Huawei Cloud announced upgrades to its startup programme in Egypt, including an advanced cloud platform, training programmes, and business resources. The Huawei Cloud Startup Programme assigns dedicated teams to advise on startups’ cloud adoption and subsidizes their cloud consumption. A single startup can apply for cloud credits worth up to $150,000.

Huawei Cloud is the second largest cloud services provider in China, according to research firm Canalys. It has been steadily expanding its global footprint, opening new data centres in Turkey and Saudi Arabia last year and operating 93 availability zones over 33 regions globally.

Huawei Egypt was founded in 2000 with a commitment to collaborating with over 350 local brands in the country and supporting the local ecosystem. In terms of supporting ICT talent, the company has set up 90 ICT academies, the “Seeds for the Future” programme, and an ICT competition. These talent programmes have benefited over 35,000 Egyptians.

During a roundtable held on the sidelines of the summit, Jo Xu, president of Huawei Cloud Egypt Business Group, emphasized that Huawei is leveraging its full capabilities to empower its customers' digital transformation and ensure they receive the highest quality Huawei services.

Jo Xu highlighted Egypt's abundance of talented young minds in the field of communications and information technology and stated that Huawei is dedicated to discovering and training these talents through collaboration with Egyptian universities.

He pointed out that Huawei Cloud offers numerous advantages that enhance digital transformation mechanisms in Egypt, especially as Huawei considers itself a key partner in achieving sustainable growth in Egypt.