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Industry leaders, technology experts, and top financial executives gathered in Johannesburg, South Africa, for Huawei’s 2025 Intelligent Finance Summit to explore the future of banking in Africa.

The summit highlighted key trends shaping the sector, including the rise of mobile-first financial services, the role of cloud computing, and the transformative potential of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in enhancing service accessibility across the continent.

Victor Guo, President of Huawei Sub-Saharan Africa Enterprise Business, showcased Huawei’s impact on financial inclusion through its expertise in 5G, cloud computing, and large language models.

Guo cited successful collaborations with M-Pesa, a mobile money product developed by Kenya’s Safaricom, and fintech platform Opay as key examples. He also revealed Huawei’s ambitious plan to partner with a major African bank to serve 100 million users within five years, creating fully digital financial ecosystems that prioritize user experience and accessibility.

A key focus of the summit was the introduction of Huawei’s new R-A-A-S framework—Reliability, Availability, Autonomy, and Security—to address challenges in the financial sector.

Jason Cao, CEO of Huawei Digital Finance BU, stressed the importance of reinventing mobile-first strategies by optimizing business processes, enhancing customer journeys, and building data-centric operational models to support long-term digital growth.

The approach is designed to create versatile financial systems for better customer experiences and to reduce operational failures.

Huawei also showcased its cloud computing infrastructure in Southern Africa, including multiple availability zones and a full cloud stack launched in 2024.

The tech giant continues to position itself as a key enabler of this transformation, combining global expertise with local partnerships to create a digitally empowered future for African finance.