Global ICT solutions provider Huawei has announced that it is reiterating its commitment to accelerating ICT development in Kenyan counties. Through its ‘‘Smart and Sustainable City’ solutions, the company says it will help Kenya build safer and more harmonious urban residential, business and tourism environments to attract investment and increase employment for sustainable economic development.
Last year, in partnership with the National Police Service and Safaricom, Huawei facilitated the delivery of the safe city project, an important part of the “Smart City” solution. The 3 parties deployed a holistic solution that integrated a call-taking and dispatching system, eLTE broadband trunking, video surveillance, and intelligent analysis (license plate recognition and violation detection) to improve Kenya’s critical incident management and crisis management capabilities. The solution was used to successfully manage Pope Francis’ visit to Kenya on November 26, 2015. Since its deployment and operation, the Safe City solution has drastically improved safety conditions in the country. According to an annual report from Kenyan police, crime has decreased by 46% in the areas covered by the Safe City solution.
“Through our investment, we hope that we would complement the government through the ICT ministry to provide all the counties with innovative ICT infrastructure is are foundation of building safe smart cities,” Huawei Kenya Vice General Manager Mr. Freddie Zhang said.
With Huawei’s focus in Kenya’s county governments, the ‘Smart and Safe City’ solutions are aimed at enabling counties to connect to each other through an integrated service architecture which allows for information sharing and provides advanced applications and services.
In 2015, through the National Police Service and Safaricom, Huawei facilitated the delivery of the safe city project which led to a decline in crime in the cities where the CCTV surveillance cameras have been installed. In addition through our carrier and enterprise departments, Huawei facilitated the launch of the 4G LTE network in the country through the carrier network Safaricom as well as successfully migrated Safaricom’s Mpesa from Germany to Kenya which has resulted to faster transaction speeds.
The company made the announcement during the 2016 Huawei Kenya Smart and Safe City Exhibition/Huawei ICT Festival Roadshow. Dubbed “Open roads to a better connected Africa” the exhibition brought together over 200 industry members to share insights, development trends and global success stories on public safety in cities and discuss ways to reduce crimes and reinforce city safety through establishing innovative ICT safe city solution.
