Jakarta. Chinese tech giant Huawei recently named the ICT development imbalance and digital talent shortage the main challenges for digital growth in the Asia-Pacific in 2022.

According to Jay Chen, the vice president of Huawei Asia-Pacific, the region has countries such as South Korea, Japan, and Singapore leading in terms of their ICT development index. But the ICT development in other parts of the region still has much room for growth.

"So this imbalance is a challenge in our region. How to handle the different markets, how to answer different requirements from different markets [in terms] of the knowledge, solutions, and real scenarios," Chen told a virtual media briefing on Tuesday.

"A very important [task] for 2022 is to make the [unconnected] connected, which is [extremely] fundamental," he added. 

Another challenge is the shortage of ICT talents, according to Chen.

Huawei has launched initiatives to close Asia-Pacific's digital talent gap in partnership with governments and industries, among others. Since 2019, Huawei has trained more than 119,000 digital talents.

Over five years, the company pledges to cultivate more than 100,000 digital talents in Indonesia. 

"We made an announcement last November that in the next five years, Huawei will invest a further $50 million and cooperate with the local governments, customers, and partners to develop another 500,000 digital talents in the Asia-Pacific region," Chen told the conference.

He said, "innovation development cannot be achieved without a talent ecosystem."

Last August, Huawei also announced it would invest $100 million in startup support for the Asia-Pacific region over the next three years. This investment will go into Huawei's Spark Accelerator program, which focuses on building the startup ecosystem in Asia-Pacific.