UNIDO Director General visits Huawei Headquarters to discuss cooperation on innovation and Industry 4.0

UNIDO Director General LI Yong took the opportunity of being in Shenzhen to strengthen the Organization’s cooperation and partnership with the private sector and paid a visit to the Shenzhen-based Huawei Technologies.

During his visit to the company’s Headquarters, LI Yong and ZHOU Mingcheng, Huawei’s Vice President of Global Public Affairs, discussed cooperation in areas that are gaining in importance for the Organization’s stakeholders, including the PCP, digitalization, e-commerce, innovation and Industry 4.0, which will be at the core of the 18th Session of the UNIDO General Conference.

The Director-General pointed out that the problem of digital poverty – defined as inadequate access to information and communications technologies (ICT) – constitutes a major obstacle to the achievement of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development for many developing countries and least developed countries. He thus highlighted, in line with the SDG9 targets, the importance of adequate ICT infrastructure to promote UNIDO’s mandate of inclusive and sustainable industrial development (ISID) and to contribute to many other Sustainable Development Goals.

The meeting also looked at potential cooperation in a number of international and bilateral development initiatives, such as the Third Industrial Development Decade for Africa (IDDA III) and the Belt and Road Initiative, which could strongly benefit from increasing South-South Cooperation, also through technology transfer and skills training.

Original source: UNIDO
Published on 24 April 2019