On 18–20 September 2025, UNESCO IITE participated in a series of events at Huawei Connect 2025 in Shanghai, China to advance ICT talent development and digital skills enhancement.
Navigating the AI era: ICT skills for the intelligent world
On 18 September 2025, UNESCO IITE joined Huawei, IDC, the OpenAtom Foundation and the Global Intelligent IoT Consortium to launch the white paper “ICT Job Roles and Skills in the Intelligent World” at the Summit “AI Facilitates Digital Talent Cultivation for a Shared Bright Future in Numerous Industries”.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is fundamentally reshaping the global workforce, redefining job roles and driving demand for new skills across industries. The white paper, based on a global survey of 900 IT and business professionals, aims to explore the projected growth of ICT jobs by 2030, detail the transformative impact of AI on existing ICT roles and provide recommendations for fostering talent development through collaboration between enterprises, educational institutions and government authorities. The paper highlights the importance of building a sustainable talent ecosystem and cultivating ICT professionals to adapt to future changes and seize opportunities in the intelligent world.
Building a sustainable ecosystem to foster ICT talent development
On 20 September 2025, the Huawei ICT Academy Support Center (IASC) Roundtable Meeting was held to discuss digital and intelligent transformation of education and ICT talent development. The event brought together more than 30 representatives from higher education institutions across nine countries, including Brazil, China, Egypt, Indonesia, Malaysia, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Singapore and Thailand.
Opening the event, Mr. Liu Fei, Vice President of the Kunpeng Domain and General Manager of openEuler at Huawei, welcomed the participants and highlighted the need for “nurturing a new generation of ICT talent who think creatively and possess cutting-edge skills, especially AI talent.”
UNESCO IITE was represented by Ms. Ekaterina Pushkareva, Programme Specialist of the Unit of Digital Pedagogy and Learning Materials, who delivered a presentation “Reshaping Education Through Digital Innovation” and spoke about the UNESCO IITE projects implemented in partnership with Huawei in the Middle East and Central Asia to strengthen ICT capacity in education and support ICT talent development.
Mr. Himanshu Mahajan, Senior Manager of the ICT Talent Partner Development Department at Huawei, gave a speech “Huawei ICT Academy Promotes AI Acceleration for Talent to Thrive” and Mr. Peter Zhang, Vice President of the Global Public Sector BU of Huawei, presented on “Talent Cultivation in AI Era”.
During the open discussion, the representatives from higher education institutions shared best practices on embedding emerging technologies, empowering educators to drive better learning outcomes and creating frameworks to enhance teaching and learning. The roundtable served as an effective platform for communication between educators and industry experts, helping to foster global ICT talent and accelerate the digital transformation of education.
