Huawei’s Electric Power Summit 2025, themed “Thrive with digital, accelerating electric power intelligence”, was held in Cape Town recently. More than 100 customers, partners and opinion leaders from the electric power industry in Africa attended the summit, which explored how to leverage digital technologies to promote the intelligent and sustainable development of the power industry.

Africa’s economy is booming, with rapid population growth and urbanisation driving massive demand for electricity. However, power shortages and outdated power grids have become significant obstacles to the continent’s economic progress.

Embracing new energy sources can boost power supply capabilities. It is projected that almost 90GW of renewable energy capacity will be added in sub-Saharan Africa between 2024 and 2030. This will further increase the need for a more intelligent and flexible power grid.

In Africa, digital technology and innovation will play a key role in accelerating electric power digital transformation. As Victor Guo, president of the Huawei Enterprise Business in sub-Sahara Africa, highlighted in his welcome speech, Huawei is committed to supporting this transformation. By harnessing its expertise in ICT, AI, cloud computing and power electronics, Huawei strives to empower its customers and partners in Africa to surge ahead and upgrade their facilities.

Yan Hao, director of partner development and sales in Huawei’s electric power digitalisation business unit, introduced digital solutions developed by Huawei and its partners for power distribution and substation environments. He said that the deployment of the intelligent distribution solution (IDS) by State Grid Shaanxi has yielded remarkable results. Power outage alarms are generated within one minute and faults located within three minutes. Transformer district line loss calculations and analyses are performed every 15 minutes, boosting the power grid’s O&M efficiency. At the event, customers from Kenya, Tanzania and other African countries also shared their experiences in electric power digitalisation.

Intelligence

Huawei has helped more than 200 power companies from 73 countries go digital, including more than 30 African power companies. A typical case involves an electric power customer from Mozambique. The power company, in collaboration with Huawei, leveraged fgOTN’s native hard pipe technology to achieve physical isolation between services and ensure a latency of less than 10ms. This not only ensures the safety of power production services but also meets the company’s digital strategy requirements for high bandwidth and ultra-long-distance transmission.

In the emerging world, intelligence will be based on ecosystems. Huawei is building a comprehensive ecosystem — combining advanced technology, professional services, skills development and strong local partnerships — to help unlock Africa’s vast potential in the power sector.

Victor Guo, president of the Huawei Enterprise Business in sub-Saharan Africa

Looking to the future, Huawei will continue to work with customers and partners to gain a deeper understanding of Africa’s electric power environments and develop solutions catering to local requirements. Our goal is to deliver reliable power grids for the continent that run stably and safely.

For more information, please visit Huawei online at www.huawei.com.