Turning to South Africa. Global tech giant, Huawei has held its annual Eco-Connect event in Johannesburg this week. It brought together industry visionaries, partners and customers for an update on its plans and offerings for the South African market. The company saw massive global growth last year and expects a further 15 percent rise this year. It says South Africa is a key market that will play an important part in generating stronger returns. CGTN's Sumitra Nydoo attended the event to see what's new.  

It's taken Huawei over thirty years but as of last year, the Chinese tech giant has overtaken American rival, Apple in global smartphone sales.

Huawei is also fast becoming the expert in smart security.

ALEX DU MIN, MANAGING DIRECTOR HUAWEI ENTERPRISE BUSINESS "Behind the numbers is a huge investment in R&D and a huge investment into the critical technologies which will drive the world to the digital one. Including 5G, AI, Internet of things, big data and cloud. So, those technologies across the board will help the future to bring the world more digital and to explore the value from the data."

The company boasts state of the art digital security and surveillance equipment to combat crime. Huawei has also introduced new innovation in IOT. And two new cloud centers are set to go live in Johannesburg and Cape Town this year that will assist local enterprise development.

SUMITRA NYDOO JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA "Gijima is a fully black-owned South African company and it has just won a license to provide government with a comprehensive cloud solution. It was able to do that because of its partnership with Huawei. Huawei essentially is providing all of the IT infrastructure."

MAPHUMUZANA NXUMALO CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER, GIJIMA GROUP "The launching pad of the SITA cloud is around digital transformation. So how government information can be accessed digitally and also access to information can be improved. Very important, because this now reduces the number of servers that are within the government space. That allows then, government entities to secure services as they use them."

Despite clashes with the USA and UK, Huawei says it has a good working relationships with most countries and security is an important element of its business.

EDWIN DIENDER, VICE PRESIDENT HUAWEI GOVERNMENT AND PUBLIC UTILITY SECTOR "Huawei looks into supporting governments and government departments such as ministries and institutions, agencies and government bodies so to speak in what we call their digital transformation process."

Huawei has also partnered with South Africa's data-only network provider, Rain in efforts to be the first to bring 5G network to the country. The tech giant says the initiative means they are at least one year ahead of competitors in this regard. SN, CGTN, JHB, SA.