Huawei Cloud Unveils AI-Native Strategy to Drive South Africa’s Intelligent Transformation

Huawei  held the Huawei South Africa Connect 2025 in Johannesburg, South Africa. Themed Accelerate Industrial Digital Intelligence for South Africa, this event attracted over 2,900 participants, including South African government representatives, industry customers, and partners organizations. At the event, Huawei Cloud experts presented the company’s AI strategy and product innovations to South African industry customers, while also sharing globally leading AI practices across various sectors.

Building an AI-Native Cloud to Accelerate South Africa’s Intelligent Transformation

Cloud and AI are a key driving force for industry innovation and economic growth. Joy Huang, Vice President of Huawei Cloud, delivered a keynote speech “Accelerate Intelligence, Amplify Success”, and shared global leading AI industry practices.

“Africa is embracing historic opportunities for intelligent development, where cloud and AI have emerged as pivotal engines driving business innovation and economic growth. Deeply rooted in Africa, Huawei Cloud is dedicated to offering AI-native cloud services. By implementing the ‘Cloud for AI’ and ‘AI for Cloud’ strategies, we aim to expedite the intelligent transformation across industries in South Africa and throughout the continent, jointly advancing towards shared success in this AI era.”

–Joy Huang, Vice President, Huawei Cloud. 

Join hands with more South African AI pioneers to drive industry innovation

During the summit, Huawei Cloud hosted a forum themed “Accelerate Intelligence, Amplify Success,” where it shared updates on its business progress in Southern Africa and success stories of empowering customers. At the forum, Rex Lei, President of Huawei Cloud Sub-Saharan Africa delivered the opening speech.

“We believe AI will help South Africa obtain new capabilities, capture new opportunities, and improve national competitiveness. More and more industry customers in South Africa are choosing Huawei Cloud for digitalization and intelligence. We hope to be an integral part of this journey and contribute more to South Africa’s industrial intelligence.”

-Rex Lei, President, Huawei Cloud Sub-Saharan Africa.

Together We Grow: Partnering with South Africa on its Digital Journey

Steven Chen, Managing Director of Huawei Cloud South Africa, underscored the company’s commitment to South Africa’s digital transformation through collaboration, highlighting Huawei Cloud’s position as the first hyperscaler in the region with zero downtime. He also made announcements including the launch of the Pangu Models 5.5 and the powerful CloudMatrix 384.

Continuous Innovation: Pangu Models Accelerate the Reshaping of Industries

Huawei Cloud’s Pangu Models focus on industry-facing applications. Pangu Models help customers tackle the most challenging issues in their specific scenarios and reimagine both operations and efficiency across numerous industries.

Li Yin, Chief Technology Officer of Huawei Cloud Pangu Models shared the innovations of Pangu Models 5.5, which have been fully upgraded to deliver new value for industries.

 “Huawei Cloud’s Pangu Models have been deployed in over 500 scenarios across more than 30 industries worldwide, driving intelligent upgrades in government, finance, healthcare, meteorology, and more. At present, enterprises are actively embracing AI. We are committed to applying these cutting-edge AI technologies in South Africa’s industries to help accelerate intelligent transformation and unlock new capabilities.”

–Li Yin, Chief Technology Officer, Huawei Cloud Pangu Models.

Moving forward, Huawei Cloud will continue to drive innovations, deepen industry expertise, and develop more customer-centric services to help more South African customers leap to intelligence. Huawei Cloud looks forward to joining hands with more African customers to unlock new opportunities in industry intelligence and create an intelligent future.