[Cape Town, 23 March 2023] Huawei today announced its ‘Non Stop Banking’ initiative. Unveiled at
the Huawei Intelligent Finance Summit for Africa 2023, the initiative calls for hand-in-hand
collaboration between the ICT and banking industries and facilitate a digital future of ‘non-stop’
services, ‘non-stop’ development, and ‘non-stop’ innovation.
In a keynote speech announcing the initiative, Leo Chen, president of Huawei Sub-Saharan Africa
Region spoke about why going digital has become such a major imperative for the banking industry.
Not only does it make it easier for banks to broaden their customer base, he said, it also saves
operational costs, allows them to develop new products, and deepen the customer relationship, thus
generating revenues for banks.
In Africa, he added, there’s an even greater imperative for banks to embrace digitization, as it allows
for greater financial inclusion. While Chen lauded the innovative work done by many African banks in
embracing digitization, he pointed out that all players in the industry need to go further if they’re to
embrace the ‘non-stop’ approach that will characterise the future of banking.
Huawei has already served more than 2500 financial customers in over 60 countries and regions,
including 50 of the world’s top 100 banks. Numerous Huawei technologies, Chen said, are helpful on
this front. Over the years, it has provided the foundation and backbone for the digitalization of the
banking industry in Africa by supporting the construction of the continent’s ICT infrastructure and
digital connectivity in rural areas. Its extensive focus on research and development (R&D),
meanwhile, means that it’s well-poised to help the industry shape its future too.
From a technical perspective, he pointed to Huawei’s strength in storage, fibre optic networks, IP
networks and data communication, which enable ‘multi-domain collaboration’ solutions for banks.
For example, its ‘storage and optical connection coordination (SOCC)’ solutions can reduce system
switchover time from two minutes to two seconds after a network breakdown, ensuring zero
transaction interruptions. The multilayer ransomware protection (MRP) technology, meanwhile, can
provide 6-layer protections, from storage, to network, to applications and other layers. It enables a
reliable and secure ‘end-to-end’ protection to the whole system. Finally, Huawei’s intelligent network
O&M solutions enable faults to be detected in one minute, diagnosed in three minutes, and rectified
in five minutes.
Huawei Cloud, the world’s fastest-growing major cloud service provider, can additionally support the
hybrid multi-cloud service required by banks. Huawei’s digital energy solutions, meanwhile, can help
to provide an uninterrupted and green power supply for the banking sector. This effectively
addresses power deficit issues and supports ‘non-stop’ banking.
That kind of technological innovation will be important because, as Jason Cao, CEO of Huawei Global
Digital Finance pointed out, financial services are becoming mobile and intelligent at a blistering
pace.
“The financial industry should pay acute attention to users and their demands, embracing changes,”
he said. “Huawei is dedicated to helping its African financial customers address challenges and
accelerate changes across six fields: shifting from transaction to digital engagement, cloud-native and
agile businesses, data democratization, secure and reliable infrastructure, hybrid multi-cloud and
Lego-style modular services, and automated and predictable operation.”
“In this way, Huawei will facilitate financial digitalization and innovatively improve productivity in
Africa. Revolving around stability, agility, and intelligence, Huawei aims to build ‘non-stop’ financial
services, and achieve ‘non-stop’ development alongside ’non-stop’ innovation,” he added.
Beyond technology, Huawei issued a call for all parties in the industry to come together and build
more robust ICT infrastructure, facilitate more measures and policies to encourage digital finance
innovation, cultivate a sound innovative ecosystem, and train more digital talent for the industry.
Huawei is particularly active on the last two points. Huawei Cloud’s Spark programme, for example,