At OTF Africa 2025, Austin You, vice president of the global technical service department and president of the carrier delivery and service dept at Huawei, delivered a keynote speech titled “Align the strengths of Africa and leverage global practices to accelerate new growth.” You highlighted that Africa is entering a golden era for telecommunications development and urged carriers to capitalise on artificial intelligence opportunities by driving innovation in the global ICT industry through upgrades in five key areas.
Over the past decade, the number of internet connections in Africa has grown at an annual rate of 16.7% – 0 double the global average – signalling a rapid acceleration in the continent’s ICT sector. In the future, African carriers stand to benefit from emerging technologies like generative AI, 5.5G and intelligent computing, which will drive the seamless integration of connectivity and digital services. Notably, the deep application of AI will be a key driver behind paradigm shifts in infrastructure, O&M, user experience, service innovation and technical capabilities.
- Upgrade to AI-ready infrastructure: computing as the “brain”, networks as the “nerves”: Some African carriers have already achieved breakthroughs through intelligent infrastructure. For example, a carrier gained 30% of the colocation market by delivering agile, tailored services and also cut energy costs significantly using AI and digital twin technologies. You emphasised that the intelligent era requires deeper integration of computing power and connectivity. Networks will act as the “nerves”, accelerating the construction of foundational AI capabilities and the efficient utilisation of the computational “brain”.
- Upgrade to agent-driven operations: AI agents + digital twins transform interaction and collaboration: By leveraging cross-domain data analysis and AI-powered predictive maintenance, an African carrier boosted network availability from 76% to 99% while cutting traffic loss by 47%. Going forward, O&M engineers will communicate with management systems using natural language instead of technical protocols. This will transform O&M collaboration from a “human + rules” approach to fully automated processes driven by AI agents.
- Experience upgrade focused on monetisation: driving higher user loyalty and greater revenue potential: An African carrier significantly outperformed competitors in an umlaut benchmarking test through experience analysis and network optimisation, leading to a notable increase in user net promoter score (NPS) and revenue. You noted that as the network quality differences between carriers narrow, to stand out and continuously grow, carriers need to strengthen user journey management, provide differentiated experience design and tailor network services to user needs.
- Innovative service upgrade: offering diverse digital services for different customer segments: Some African carriers have explored new business models through digital platforms. For example, one carrier targeted the delivery worker community with a combined package of communication services and mobile finance, attracting over 5 000 users within two months and significantly increasing the average revenue per user. You emphasised that, looking forward, diversified digital services and intelligent offerings will be key for carrier business development. He cited China Mobile, which has created over 4 000 solutions for enterprises and governments by leveraging its AI-ready infrastructure and AI-powered operations, achieving shared growth across various industries.
- Generative AI-driven technology upgrade: supporting the shift from AI+ to AI-native: Generative AI is transforming industry automation patterns: shifting from data collection to digital twin simulations, from expertise-led decision-making to a model-driven, optimal decision-making, from ticket-based workflows to agent-driven end-to-end loops and from case sharing to knowledge-base-supported self-improvement. This shift empowers engineers to evolve from operators into supervisors, leveraging AI as the primary productive force.
Five drivers
You concluded by emphasising the huge potential of Africa’s ICT market. He outlined five new key drivers shaping its future: AI-ready infrastructure, agent-driven operations and management, differentiated user experiences, diverse digital services and broad AI adoption. He reaffirmed Huawei’s commitment to partnering with African carriers to seize these opportunities, apply global best practices and drive innovation, empowering local carriers to lead in the global ICT industry.