Jakarta.  On November 3rd, 2021, the Asean Foundation and Chinese tech corporation Huawei hosted the online "Asia Pacific Innovation Day · Digital Talent Summit 2021". Both parties pledged a commitment to culture digital talents within the Asia Pacific region.

This will be done chiefly through the Huawei Asean Academy, an engineering institute that trains digital skills. The Huawei Asean Academy, which was first implemented in September of 2019, has already opened in Indonesia as of January of 2021.

The academy, which "prioritizes talent enablement and ecosystem building," will help enable the growth of local ICT industries and has already trained 23,465 ICT professionals from Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, and Indonesia, according to the company's 2020 Digital Talent Insight Report.

Moreover, another program, Huawei's 'Seeds for the Future' program in partnership with Asean, encourages students to "broaden their horizons, immerse in a cross-cultural environment and promote talent development" through ICT courses and travel, as written on their website.

"This program tries to minimize the gap," says Executive Director of Asean Foundation, Yang Mee Eng, in the summit, referring to the gaps in digital talent, gender equality, rural concentration.

She continued by saying, "We design our program together with Huawei, custom to the needs of the Asean region." Dato' Sri Mohamed Mentek, Chair of the Asean Digital Senior Officials Meeting, says that this program is the "right step towards building a sustainable digital talent ecosystem in the region."

According to Tempo, Jacky Chen, CEO of Huawei Indonesia, revealed on January 25th that the academy strives to improve the competence of 100,000 Indonesian talents. The company also hopes to lend a hand in Indonesia's goal of becoming the top five digital economies in the world by 2045.

This sentiment was echoed in the digital summit by the Presidential Chief of Staff, Moeldoko, who said, "Today's initiative is in line with the goal of the Indonesian government, who currently prepares 600,000 digital talents every year to lead the nation in taking the digital leap."

Moreover, at the summit, Jay Chen, VP of Huawei Asia Pacific, also announced that Huawei had committed an additional $15 million to develop digital ICT talents in the Asia Pacific region.

He concluded the summit by saying: "Together, our cooperation will contribute to achieving the objectives of Asean Digital Masterplan 2025, which aims to increase the capacity of youth in the region to participate in the digital economy and to create a digitally inclusive society in the region."