As countries push ahead with digital transformation, infrastructure planning is evolving. It is no longer only about connectivity and platforms; it is also about building the skills pipeline that allows citizens and businesses to use technology effectively and securely at scale.
In South Africa, the skills-and-infrastructure link is especially real for young people entering the next phase after matric. The question is increasingly practical: what skills translate into opportunity, and how quickly? Micro-credentials and industry certifications are gaining momentum as shorter, stackable routes to build job-relevant capability, prove competence, and access entry points into the digital economy.
Digital transformation is also raising the bar on what “readiness” looks like. Organisations may have networks, devices and platforms in place, yet still struggle to use technology at scale because the talent pipeline is too thin. The pressure shows up most sharply in the roles that keep modern systems running and secure, from cybersecurity and cloud operations to software development, data and analytics, and the technicians and engineers responsible for resilience and uptime.
This is why many national digital strategies now treat talent development as a foundational enabler of economic competitiveness. In South Africa, the National Digital and Future Skills Strategy calls for a coordinated approach to building digital skills across the education and employment system, recognising that the ability to participate in the digital economy depends on both access and readiness.
“Digital infrastructure delivers its full value only when it is matched with human capacity,” says Charles Cheng, Deputy CEO of Huawei South Africa. “If we plan networks, cloud and digital public services without planning the skills to build, secure and operate them, we create an implementation gap, and the benefits of digital transformation stay out of reach for too many people and too many businesses.”
From connectivity to competitiveness – why the shift is urgent
The urgency is being driven by rapid change in the labour market. Employers increasingly expect skills requirements to shift as digital tools and AI reshape how work is done.
At an economic level, skills are becoming a form of national preparedness, enabling countries to adopt technology faster, attract digital investment and build competitive local industries that create jobs.
Within education, the response is accelerating. Universities and TVET colleges are strengthening alignment with labour-market needs, adopting industry-certified programmes, micro-credentials and applied learning pathways to close the gap between study and employability.
“Skills ecosystems are becoming part of infrastructure planning because talent now determines speed,” Cheng says. “It determines how fast a country can modernise services, how quickly businesses can adopt cloud and AI, and how confidently society can manage cyber risk. In that sense, skills are no longer separate from infrastructure, they are infrastructure.”
Public–private collaboration — turning strategies into pipelines
Building skills at the scale required cannot be achieved by governments or education systems acting alone. What is emerging across markets is a more deliberate model of public–private collaboration, where industry supports education institutions with curriculum input, practical exposure, and recognised certification pathways that better match real-world job requirements.
Huawei’s approach is one example of how this collaboration is being implemented through structured, long-term programmes in partnership with universities, colleges, governments and industry bodies. A central mechanism is the Huawei ICT Academy, a global programme that partners with universities and higher learning institutions to provide industry-aligned curriculum, hands-on learning and certification pathways. Through the programme, Huawei works with educators and institutions to help students gain relevant technical exposure in areas such as networking, cloud, AI and cybersecurity.
Huawei also supports digital talent development through initiatives such as the Huawei ICT Competition, which provides an international platform for students and teachers to strengthen practical skills and innovation.
“We don’t approach talent development as a once-off CSR initiative,” Cheng adds. “We approach it as a core part of digital ecosystem building, partnering with education institutions, supporting instructors, and expanding access to recognised certification pathways that help young people move from learning to earning. Through the Huawei ICT Academy, we’ve expanded more than 2 600 academies globally, training over 200 000 students each year, across a wide range of countries and institutions. In SA, Huawei has academies at 88 universities, TVET and private colleges.”
Planning for physical networks and human networks
As governments and industries prepare for more advanced digital economies, including AI-readiness, cybersecurity resilience and cloud-enabled service delivery, the case is strengthening for skills to be embedded into the same planning logic as fibre, spectrum, data centres and public digital platforms.
This means measuring talent pipelines, strengthening educator capability, expanding applied technical programmes, and building pathways from classroom to workplace. It also means sustained collaboration in aligning public sector priorities, education system capacity, and industry requirements so that the workforce grows in step with the infrastructure it must power.
“The countries that compete best in the next decade will be the ones that build both physical networks and human networks, together,” Cheng said. “That is how digital transformation becomes inclusive, scalable and economically meaningful.”
