A new part­ner­ship has been forged with the sign­ing of a mem­o­ran­dum of un­der­stand­ing (MOU) be­tween the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus and lead­ing glob­al in­for­ma­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tions tech­nol­o­gy (ICT) so­lu­tions provider, Huawei Tech­nolo­gies.

The three-year MOU, signed on Mon­day, out­lines two key ar­eas of col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween the or­gan­i­sa­tions– es­tab­lish­ment of joint re­search and de­vel­op­ment co-op­er­a­tive pro­grammes and sup­port with teach­ing, re­search, the cul­tur­al and ed­u­ca­tion­al ex­change of fac­ul­ty and stu­dents; and staff de­vel­op­ment. The sign­ing took place at the Cam­pus' Uni­ver­si­ty Inn and Con­fer­ence Cen­tre.

"This is an im­por­tant and ex­cit­ing mo­ment for The UWI St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus, as we em­bark on sign­ing an agree­ment with one of the world's largest tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­nies, Huawei," said UWI St Au­gus­tine's pro vice-chan­cel­lor and cam­pus prin­ci­pal, Pro­fes­sor Clement Sankat.

Ac­knowl­edg­ing the im­por­tant glob­al role and rep­u­ta­tion that Huawei has es­tab­lished, Pro­fes­sor Sankat al­so con­grat­u­lat­ed the or­gan­i­sa­tion for demon­strat­ing their com­mit­ment to mak­ing their tech­nol­o­gy in­ter­na­tion­al­ly avail­able to fos­ter the ad­vance­ment of ed­u­ca­tion, as a key part of their cor­po­rate strat­e­gy.

Huawei an­nu­al­ly in­vests be­tween 10 per cent to 15 per cent of its rev­enue in­to re­search and de­vel­op­ment and de­liv­ers cost-ef­fec­tive and in­no­v­a­tive so­lu­tions to al­low schools and uni­ver­si­ties to en­gage stu­dents in a con­nect­ed world. The com­pa­ny al­so builds bridges to cross the dig­i­tal di­vide, equalise ed­u­ca­tion­al op­por­tu­ni­ties and help im­prove teach­ing qual­i­ty. Most re­cent­ly, Latin Amer­i­ca En­ter­prise chief tech­nol­o­gy of­fi­cer, Pe­dro Gomez Mar­tinez, de­liv­ered the fea­ture ad­dress at the launch of the cam­pus' 2015 Re­search Ex­po, one of the key event's that com­mem­o­rat­ed the Cam­pus' 55th An­niver­sary.

In his re­ply, Huawei's gen­er­al man­ag­er for T&T, Ja­son Deng, thanked UWI St Au­gus­tine for es­tab­lish­ing this col­lab­o­ra­tive ef­fort with his com­pa­ny. He used the op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­it­er­ate that Huawei, ranked 228 on the Glob­al For­tune 500 list­ing, op­er­ates as a glob­al en­ter­prise, op­er­at­ing in over 170 coun­tries and em­ploy­ing over 170,000 glob­al em­ploy­ees, with lo­cal hires ac­count­ing for 70 per cent.

"Huawei has been op­er­at­ing in Trinidad and To­ba­go for the past nine years. This means that we are ful­ly com­mit­ted to T&T and we will in­vest in de­vel­op­ing pro­grammes to help bridge the dig­i­tal di­vide and build need­ed ICT in­fra­struc­ture. We want to share our ex­per­tise, share our knowl­edge of tech­nol­o­gy here in Trinidad and To­ba­go and build the lo­cal ICT in­dus­try," said Deng.

"This MOU is im­por­tant for Huawei as we make ef­forts to help Trinidad and To­ba­go cre­ate a dy­nam­ic, Smart Ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem, which ap­plies tech­nol­o­gy to learn­ing and makes the process of teach­ing eas­i­er and more ef­fi­cient." He shared that Huawei's vi­sion for the fu­ture is to con­nect peo­ple not on­ly with oth­er peo­ple, but with things such as ve­hi­cles or house­hold ap­pli­ances, via the In­ter­net of Things (IoT).

Present at the sign­ing were UWI St, Au­gus­tine's Cam­pus coun­cil chair Ewart Williams along with oth­er coun­cil col­leagues: Ash­mead Ali, Kr­ish­na Bood­hai and Mau­reen Man­chouck, di­rec­tor of the Of­fice of In­sti­tu­tion­al Ad­vance­ment and In­ter­na­tion­al­i­sa­tion Sha­ran Chan­dra­dath Singh, Cam­pus chief in­for­ma­tion of­fi­cer Nazir Al­ladin and the Cam­pus le­gal of­fi­cer Camille Ram­cha­ran.

Huawei's en­ter­prise team was rep­re­sent­ed by man­ag­er Stone Shi and ac­count man­ag­er Tim­o­thy Odiean.

The Cam­pus prin­ci­pal al­so con­firmed that a team of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 16 per­sons rep­re­sent­ing the re­gion­al UWI will at­tend Huawei's Latin Amer­i­ca ICT in Ed­u­ca­tion Sum­mit 2015 in Can­cun, Mex­i­co, from Thurs­day to Fri­day. The Con­gress will un­der­score Huawei's promise of In­no­v­a­tive ICT–Build­ing Bet­ter Con­nect­ed Ed­u­ca­tion.