Artificial intelligence (AI) isn’t going anywhere, and it has the potential to change the world. It’s mostly a man’s world — something that Huawei’s Women in Tech Digital Skills Development Programme shines a light on. Now in its sixth year, Huawei hopes to put women in the driver’s seat and help shape AI for the future.
In collaboration with Stuff magazine, this year’s event — HERabytes: Small Business. Big Intelligence — gathered more than 50 businesswomen across South Africa’s varied workplace. All contributed fresh ideas, equipping each other with the AI and leadership tools necessary not only to survive, but thrive.
Representatives from Huawei, the Department of Communications and Digital Technologies (DCDT), the Department of Women, Youth and Persons with Disabilities (DWYPD), Henley Business School Africa, along with Stuff’s own Toby Shapshak, took to the stage to speak widely about the state of SA’s digital economy. It’s not all doom and gloom — in fact, the takeaway was exceedingly hopeful. Huawei’s COO explained as much.
AI isn’t the whole story
“One new skill can become a HERabyte. One better decision can become a HERabyte. One smarter way of working can become a HERabyte. And when those capabilities compound, small business becomes big intelligence,” said Christina Naidoo, COO, Huawei South Africa.
“The AI economy is being built now. Build your place in it, one HERabyte at a time.”
Of course, AI isn’t a magic wand. Sure, you can chuck a prompt into ChatGPT and hope for the best, but you won’t suddenly have a billion-rand business on your hands. The real value comes from knowing how to use these tools to solve real-world problems. That’s where Huawei’s three-day programme comes in.
The women taking part were given hands-on training in AI and other digital technologies, with a particular focus on how these skills can be translated to a small business setting. Whether that’s understanding customers, crunching data, improving marketing, or simply automating the ‘boring’ stuff, the idea is to turn AI into more than a buzzword, and into something that can be genuinely helpful.
AI wasn’t the only trick up Huawei’s sleeve. The programme also touched on 5G and cloud computing before moving into leadership development from Henley Business School. Because as impressive as AI is, there’s still a human somewhere in the driver’s seat — and somebody has to know where they’re going.
That was essentially what Stuff’s own Toby Shapshak had to say on the subject. He stressed just how valuable having a brain at the helm — particularly one not laser-focused on a single pixel, but rather the entire picture — of technology like this is.
That human element is becoming especially important in 2026 as AI finds its way into more nooks and crannies of the workplace. The technology can identify patterns, automate tasks, generate fresh ideas on a whim, but that doesn’t mean it gets to decide what a business stands for.
“Women do not come into leadership development as empty vessels waiting to be filled. They arrive with experience, expertise, ambition, and hard-won insight. The opportunity is to create the conditions in which that potential can become more conscious, more confident, and more influential,” said Dr Jacques Le Roux, COO, Henley Business School South Africa.
Beyond the tech
The great Heidi Brauer also turned up to pass on certain nuggets (or rather, full-course meals) of her own wisdom. The biggest being to trust your gut in the face of hard, empirical data. The numbers alone may tell a portion of a story, but only the drivers behind it can weave it into something worth reading.
Heidi’s suggestions involve hosting agenda-less meetings and listening to the fellows around oneself, and reading more — a whole lot more — to avoid being trapped in the echo chambers smartphones so willingly provide. Most important of all is to sleep on decisions, both big and small. With budgets drying up everywhere, it’s more important than ever to trust your gut and be sure of yourself.
Huawei’s Women in Tech Digital Skills Development Programme 2026 edition has been a success thus far. This isn’t Huawei’s first rodeo. The Women in Tech programme has been in effect since 2021, making this year’s cohort the sixth to go through the initiative. It gives the latest edition a little more weight than your average three-day workshop. It’s part of a much greater, longer-running effort to build digital skills and leadership abilities among South African women, while connecting those skills to the wider tech industry.
“More than 350 graduates have come through our Graduate Programme since 2017, alongside Huawei’s global commitment to helping millions of women build digital skills,” said Naidoo. “Our ambition is to keep creating pathways through which women can participate in technology, use it confidently and convert that capability into stronger careers and stronger businesses.”
