Huawei Cloud has launched a two-year initiative that will see the company allocate US$ 10 million for middle and early-stage startups in Nigeria, hoping to create its ecosystem of innovators.
- The company will also provide cloud services, data enablement, and Artificial Intelligence to help prospective startups in iterating and improving their technologies.
- The announcement was made during the Huawei Cloud Startup Summit Nigeria 2024, held in Lagos last week.
- Huawei Cloud has also expressed its commitment to partner with Venture Capitalists and Innovation accelerator programs across the continent to streamline the initiative and spur digital transformation.
“Huawei Cloud is committed to providing an ecological platform for Nigerian startups, as well as enabling startups to get cost-effective cloud resources with ease and reach business opportunities at a faster pace. We strongly believe Huawei Cloud is a better choice for Nigerian startups,” said the director of Huawei Cloud Hugo Hu.
He has challenged Nigerian startups to embrace the program, which he says would tackle various difficulties faced by African startups including funding, data storage and security, and the scarcity of digital infrastructure.
Huawei Cloud will facilitate the startups with about US$ 150,000 in cloud credits to make the service cost-effective. Innovators also have the opportunity to link up with top-level investors and clients globally, thus serving as an exposure wagon.
The company also plans to create a local cloud hub in Nigeria, which would make it easier for more startups to embrace the technology. With 88 cloud infrastructures set up all over the world, the company aims to empower more than 10,000 startups by 2025.
The company still lags with 3,000 startups on board. By entrenching its presence in Nigeria, Africa’s largest startup industry, Huawei intends to ramp up those numbers as well as open up possibilities for expanding the initiative to other aggressive startup markers in the continent.
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