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Mobile first, and resilience empowered, AI-infused finance.
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Key industry leaders and ICT innovators gathered at the Huawei Intelligent Finance Summit (HIFS) Sub-Saharan Africa 2025 with the theme of ‘Mobile First, Resilience Empowers AI-infused Finance’ to discuss the future of Africa’s financial services sector and address the challenges of implementing innovative solutions. The summit’s agenda focused on fostering progressive dialogue to shape the future of technology and finance in the region.
Victor Guo, President of Huawei Sub-Saharan Africa Enterprise Business, emphasised the transformative impact of technology integration on financial inclusion across the continent. He highlighted the rapid evolution of financial services in Africa, driven by increased economic activity and widespread smartphone adoption – all fitting themes for an address titled, “In Africa, for Africa, Technology Inclusion Booming Financial Inclusion.”
Leveraging its ICT proficiency in 5G, cloud computing, and large language models (LLM), Huawei is committed to powering the growth of the financial services sector. The scale of its expertise can be seen over its 27-year track record in Africa, where it has supported telcos, fintechs and banks to drastically enhance financial inclusion.
“Our cross-sector collaborations are instrumental in accelerating the growth of inclusive finance and significantly reducing the proportion of unbanked individuals in sub-Saharan Africa,” said Guo.
Huawei’s impactful work on the continent includes partnering with telecommunication leaders like Safaricom to launch M-Pesa, which now boasts over 34 million customers in East Africa. In the fintech sector, Huawei has partnered with innovators like Opay, in Nigeria, contributing to their impressive reach of 35 million users within the past five years.
“Currently, we are working with a leading African bank to achieve 100 million users over the next five years through the development of fully digital ecosystems.”
Other themes raised at the summit showcase how Huawei’s digital platforms strengthen banking resilience, reduce outages and guide industry partners on trends that will inform the future of Africa’s financial services industry (FSI). They also shared insights on the growing importance of cloud services and artificial intelligence (AI) for digital innovation.
Award-winning futurist and author Brett King spoke to the future possibilities that AI agents and AI-based ecosystems can unlock for the sector. Focusing on Bank 5.0 and Agentic Banking, King stressed that sectors like financial services will need to integrate AI into their processes and problem sets to reap the rewards of cutting-edge AI advancements.
King foresees the impact of AI being at the centre of unlocking the Bank 5.0 era, which will be defined by smart contracts and AI-based marketplaces. He identified the development of stable quantum computing platforms as a development that will redefine banking.
“In the next five years, we expect to see the first stable, quantum computing platforms. This is important because once this has been achieved, our current security infrastructure, which is RSA-based encryption, will be undermined by quantum computing.”
He emphasised that only FSIs who are taking advantage of cloud services like Huawei Cloud, with post-quantum encryption technologies, will be protected.
King concluded that banks and other FSIs will need to have technical and cultural agility to survive in the world of banking 5.0, where AI systems enable consumer interactions everywhere.
Huawei remains responsive to the opportunities available in the Bank 5.0 era and is committed to helping its FSI partners in Africa realise this generational progress. As Jason Cao, CEO of Huawei Digital Finance BU, said, “We have already seen how digital payments and AI are changing the sector. AI is changing how we use our phones, and we see a future where everyone will have an agent and this will cause a behavioural change that affects the whole industry.”
These changes mean the sector will need to reconsider how it structures customer journeys.
In addition to its technology and customer expertise, Huawei is now introducing its AI-powered R-A-A-S (Reliability, Availability, Autonomy, and Security) framework to accelerate financial Institutions’ digital and intelligent transformation as they grapple with the challenges of the intelligent era. This approach will help FSIs address current challenges, like reducing service outages while keeping systems agile.
The RAAS framework forms the foundation of how Huawei solves challenges for its financial sector customers. The framework includes:
Mobile-first strategies will also be central to digital transformation. By 2030, about 81% of people in sub-Saharan Africa are expected to own smartphones, meaning customers will increasingly demand smooth mobile experiences from their banks.
Huawei believes that the intelligent era necessitates a fresh approach to mobile-first banking. This strategy centres around bringing more businesses online to cultivate broader connections. To achieve this, Huawei works with its customers to redesign the customer journey and eliminate failure points within business processes.
By fostering increased connections, Huawei facilitates a shift towards data-centric business models, which in turn enables the development of more advanced models for financial companies. These advanced models empower FSIs to enhance their AI use and streamline the creation of thriving digital ecosystems.
Roc Bai, Vice President of Huawei Cloud Sub-Saharan Africa, emphasised that robust cloud infrastructure and services are essential for a strong digital ecosystem. Huawei’s commitment to African enterprises is evident in its three availability zones in South Africa and a comprehensive cloud stack launched in 2024, which offers over 100 cloud services and has maintained a flawless record with no major outages in the past year. This reliable and scalable cloud infrastructure is essential to support the AI and data-driven solutions that are becoming central to the financial sector.
Bai stated, “AI is transforming everything. Every company considers AI as a core component of their strategy.” He highlighted that businesses are increasing their investment in computing power, data, and innovative models to maintain a competitive edge.
Huawei’s database infrastructure, including DWS and Datalake, addresses industry challenges related to high-volume data processing and real-time customer service, aligning with the demands of the intelligent era. Bai concluded that “innovative models accelerate business transformation and drive growth across the financial services sector,” demonstrating Huawei’s commitment to supporting its clients through this strategic shift.
Cloud will be essential to the future of the financial services industry, says Ian Ravenscroft, Vice President of Mobile Money at Huawei. He presented his views on the future of mobile money in a speech titled “Mobile First: Online Life Enabled by Smart, Empowered Super Apps”.
Huawei foresees mobile growth and digital ecosystems becoming key pillars for success in the financial sector. Financial institutions will be drivers of innovations like Super Apps, where they become an online marketplace which hosts a range of different businesses which consumers access through a single app.
At the core of super app’s success is “the ability to take digital content from other companies, repurpose it and put it inside an FSI’s app, without needing their own IT department”, said Ravenscroft. He pointed out that examples of this trend already exist today, and that Huawei has been involved in supporting many successful cases around the world.
The Huawei Intelligent Finance Summit 2025 not only showcased Huawei’s technological prowess and commitment to Africa’s financial sector but also fostered a vital exchange of ideas and experiences. The engaging panel discussion, featuring insights from key players like Temenos, Banco BAI and one of the major banks in Africa, underscored the practical benefits of partnering with Huawei for digital transformation. These real-world examples highlight how Huawei’s solutions are actively addressing challenges and driving innovation across the continent.
Huawei stands as a pivotal force in shaping the future of the African financial services industry. With its robust infrastructure, cutting-edge AI solutions, and deep understanding of the region’s unique needs, Huawei is not just a technology provider but a strategic partner, empowering financial institutions to thrive in the intelligent era and deliver meaningful impact to their customers.
Huawei is a leading global provider of information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructure and smart devices. With integrated solutions across four key domains – telecom networks, IT, smart devices, and cloud services – we are committed to bringing digital to every person, home and organisation for a fully connected, intelligent world.
Huawei’s end-to-end portfolio of products, solutions and services are both competitive and secure. Through open collaboration with ecosystem partners, we create lasting value for our customers, working to empower people, enrich home life, and inspire innovation in organisations of all shapes and sizes.
At Huawei, innovation focuses on customer needs. We invest heavily in basic research, concentrating on technological breakthroughs that drive the world forward. By December 31, 2023, Huawei had 207,000 employees, more than 114,000 of which were R&D employees (55%). In 2023, our total R&D spending reached CNY164.7 billion, representing 23.4% of our total revenue. We operate in more than 170 countries and regions, serving more than three billion people worldwide. In 2023, through the efforts of all employees, the company achieved an estimated annual sales revenue of CNY704.2 billion, aligned with forecasts. Founded in 1987, Huawei is a private company fully owned by its employees.
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Vanashree Govender – vanashreegovender@huawei.com
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