Shenzhen, Feb 27 (IANS): Chinese tech giant Huawei on Thursday said it plans to train two million ICT professionals and popularise digital skills over the next five years by collaborating with universities .

Since 2015, Huawei has partnered with more than 600 international universities to set up Huawei ICT academies, helping the universities improve their ICT teaching abilities and train more than 1,500 teachers.

To meet new requirements and challenges, the Huawei ICT Academy Programme will enter the second phase in 2020.

"Huawei will continue to establish more ICT Academies. Every year, we will build 600-1,000 Huawei ICT Academies. By doing so, we aim to benefit more university teachers and students in the digital world, enable more people to enjoy equal and high-quality education, enhance digital skills, and inject fresh impetus into the industry," Hank Stokbroekx, Vice President of Enterprise Service, Huawei Enterprise Business Group, said in a statement.

According to its five-year plan, Huawei plans to develop two million ICT professionals and continuously update its school-enterprise cooperation solutions in cutting-edge technologies, such as 5G and Artificial Intelligence (AI).

To achieve this goal, the company will set up the Huawei ICT Academy Development Incentive Fund (ADIF), with a total investment of at least $50 million over the next five years.

This fund aims to help ICT academies operate stably by providing teaching experiment equipment for cooperative universities to improve students' practical skills, training teachers through the fund, providing free exam vouchers to encourage students to take Huawei's certification exams, and setting up an education fund to reward excellent teachers and students.