Shenzhen: Prime Minister Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif witnesses the signing of a framework agreement between the Ministry of Information Technology of the Government of Pakistan and Huawei. Source: x.com/GovtofPakistan
The Government of Pakistan, in partnership with Huawei and others, has announced plans to train youth of various ages in information technology skills.
These partnerships with the private sector will facilitate, develop, and equip talented youth in the country with Information Communication Technology (ICT) skills, the Pakistan Software Export Board (PSEB) said. This comes in an effort to facilitate the country’s transition to a digital-based economy and is followed closely by the Ministry of Information Technology and Telecommunication’s (MoITT) approval of the National AI Policy.
According to the Associated Press of Pakistan (APP), the Government of Pakistan (GoP) plans to train one million youth in conjunction with Huawei and other partners. An official from the MoITT said to APP, “If even one million youth earn an average of $10,000 annually, the economic impact would be massive.”
Programs will target a range of people from those undergoing secondary education to trained professionals, they added.
Agreement history and launching the portal
A Huawei official detailed the agreement process: In June 2024, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif visited[1] Huawei’s headquarters in Shenzhen, where an agreement was signed to train 300,000 Pakistanis in IT skills with Huawei’s help. The MoITT, in collaboration with Huawei Technologies Pakistan, launched a training portal[2] at the inaugural event at the Huawei Islamabad head office on January 1.
Training-of-trainers sessions within the Higher Education Commission (HEC) and at the federal level have since begun, as well as the training of students and professionals.
Huawei has 100 academies spread across universities in Pakistan, the official said. Through this, over 300 individuals are certified as Huawei trainers, able to train students during their bachelor’s programs in ICT and networking systems, conduct exams, and award certificates, according to PSEB and Huawei. Additionally, Huawei has developed more than 30 ICT labs and deployed its equipment within campuses for the benefit of students.
“If you’re an engineer completing your 4-year bachelor’s program and you come down into the industry, I find you as a person with no experience, which is where these academies and the Huawei trainers come in, so students have hands-on experience of this equipment.” The official stated.
Program details
The current program will function across physical and digital domains, according to PSEB and Huawei.
Huawei’s portal has around 18 different courses offered at varying degrees of difficulty, ranging from introductions to AI and cloud to three-month research projects. These courses are self-paced and self-taught. At the end of the course, the students will give a certification exam.
To streamline the training processes, the GoP and Huawei have devised four basic branches to increase registrants.
MoITT’s DigiSkills program currently has around 700,000 registrants, the Huawei official stated. The GoP aims to have 10% of the registrants for this program register on the Huawei portal.
Approximately 241 of Pakistan’s higher education institutions are connected via the Pakistan Education Research Network (PERN), which is developed and managed by Huawei. University students can thus be brought to register on the Huawei portal.
Teachers in federal school institutions, such as in Azad Jammu & Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan, will undergo ‘training of trainers’, giving students the resources they need to learn IT-related skills. Approximately 60,000 to 70,000 students are already registered and have taken courses on the platform.
The capacity building of professionals in the IT industry is currently achieved by offering higher levels—associate, professional, and expert—of coursework and training. Huawei is currently working with professionals in federal and private sectors. The official states that the Huawei academies will play a large role in professionals’ hands-on training, and despite low usage of the portal during this process, people trained here will be added to the 300,000. “Whether you are a doctor, mechanic, ICT professional, the only way you can understand technology is at a grassroots level.”
Potential limitations
The portal alone is not enough to conduct thorough IT training, as hands-on experience is required in certain subject areas. Additionally, the official can only speak to the 300,000 people they have agreed to train. “Maybe (GoP) have something envisioned, and are speaking with other partners, but what I can say is that this is what we have achieved and this is what we will achieve. With us it’s only 300,000.”
It is unclear when or how the government plans to achieve the one million number they have spoken about, as they have not detailed the work required to build the capacity needed to scale the number of trained people up to one million. Training for professionals requires the most work as that is mostly delivered in-person, and the program has yet to reach provincial schooling systems, the official adds.
However, given the methodology the PSEB and Huawei have reported, scaling the number of trainings given to youth is a workable task, and the goal of one million, while lofty, seems attainable. If successful, this initiative will bring Pakistan forward in the digital age.
References
- ^ visited (tribune.com.pk)
- ^ training portal (tribune.com.pk)