Huawei knowledge transfer in Africa: Corporate communication and users’ responses on social networks

For quite a long time China has been accused in the West of pursuing a disguised colonisation of Africa. Differently from Western countries, whose actions in the continent often presuppose top-down relations, China has been said to exert soft power in Africa by establishing peer-to-peer relations both at the continent and at the state levels. These relations promote aid and investments ‘with no strings attached’ (Gagliardone, 2019; Zhang, 2013), meaning that China is committed to develop African infrastructure and services in a number of sectors, fostering agreements that keep African actors in business.

Beyond such macro understanding, the idea of a homogenising ‘soft power’ needs to be further unpacked. In fact, such a label can hardly account for the variety of and realpolitik behind Chinese investments in the continent. This means that not only that it would be too simplistic to consider Chinese companies as the longa manus of the Chinese government in Africa, but that the idea of China exerting its soft power in Africa is valuable only insofar as it constitutes the entry point for exploring the diverse initiatives of Chinese actors, which are not exclusively political or economical, but also focused on forms of cultural exchange and experience sharing.

China-Africa relations are often conceived, since their programmatic documents, as forms of mutually beneficial cooperation. Gu et al. (2016: 25) write that ‘the Chinese state has engaged in unprecedented economic diplomacy in Africa’. Here the keyword is ‘diplomacy’, which conveys the idea of a flexible approach on the part of the Chinese authorities to African economies and societies, rather than one that presupposes a unique, top-down relationship. The authors continue by arguing that ‘this [diplomacy] has two aspects: multilateral (pan-African) and bilateral (state-to-state) diplomacy. The former is driven through the FOCAC framework, a dialogue and institutionalised process for cooperation established in 2000. The latter is driven by extensive tours of African states by Chinese state and party officials and bilateral cooperation agreements’ (p. 25). With regard to the fifth Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), the document analysis conducted by King (2013: 6) stresses the frequent use of words such as ‘mutual trust’, ‘understanding’, ‘accommodation’ and ‘learning’, thus marking the desire of all parties involved to (at least discursively) shape the China-(pan-)Africa cooperation as a symmetric one. Most interestingly, in the 2015–2018 plan, which followed the sixth FOCAC, the strategic decision to turn the Forum on China-Africa Media Cooperation into an official sub-forum of FOCAC was announced. This shift highlights the extent to which both China and the African countries consider ICTs to be a crucial sector in their mutual cooperation.

At the same time, beyond this pan-Africa framework, China is increasingly committed to fostering bilateral agreements with individual African states. The goal is to adapt to each context without imposing an agenda, but rather seeking a convergence between China’s own interests and those of local actors. On this point, Gagliardone (2019: 56) claims that ‘a continental overview of China’s engagement. . .corroborates the impression that China is not trying to impose a blueprint . . . Rather, [it] has produced specific and individual responses in different African countries’. King (2013: 11) notes that the Chinese model of tailoring its interventions to a single state’s needs does not only involve economic issues, but has to do more broadly with ‘a landscape of common endeavours, learning and exchange’. This means that China-Africa cooperation stretches well beyond economy and politics and comes to encompass education, knowledge transfer, training and the sharing of cultural values. Hence, it is relevant to explore China-Africa relations by contextualising them within a precise sector – that is, ICTs – and country – that is, Kenya – in order to assess their impact.

Together with Nigeria and Egypt, today, Kenya has the highest internet access rate in all of Africa and it holds one of the highest rates in mobile penetration (We Are Social, 2019). China’s presence in Kenya’s ICT sector has become crucial over the last two decades (Brautigam, 2009; Gagliardone, 2019; Oreglia, 2012). Here, Huawei – the major Chinese private ICT company – provides both backbone and last mile solutions (Oreglia, 2012). Indeed, it was in Kenya that Huawei began its African investments in 1998, anticipating the advent of other American and European actors. At present, Huawei is in charge of Phase 2 of the National Optic Fibre Backbone Infrastructure (NOFBI), a project that is expected to link all 47 counties by implementing an extra 1600 km of optic fibre. Beyond that, Kenya is committed to promoting leading ICT policies not only at the national level, but for the whole East Africa region.

Beyond commercial and economic agreements, China’s cooperation with Kenya includes a wide and diversified range of initiatives meant to support Kenya’s human resources development. As King (2010: 489) contends, these initiatives have to do with the ‘provision of school buildings, university link projects, Chinese language training’, as well as with ‘short- and long-term training provision, not just linked to the needs of the Ministry of Education or Higher Education’, but ‘enterprise-based training associated with the spectrum of Chinese companies’. In fact, big Chinese companies are more than happy to launch training initiatives which not only ‘create competitive advantage through transferring their reconfiguration knowledge relevant to local [needs]’ (Rui et al., 2017: 133), but also help them to gain visibility among the population and political leverage with the local authorities (Corkin, 2012). Training can take the form of on-site education, academies and vocational schools (Agbebi, 2018; Musyimi et al., 2018; Rui et al., 2017).

Chinese businesses in Kenya employ an average of 360 local employees, far greater than the average 147 local employees employed by foreign-invested enterprises. One of the objectives Huawei claims is to train and hire a local ICT-skilled workforce. In Huawei’s 2017 Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) document, the company reiterates its commitment to training: ‘In 2014, Huawei launched its global flagship programme “Seeds for the Future” ICT training programme in Kenya. Each year, Huawei selected outstanding ICT major college students and sent them to its headquarters for professional training; some of them had already joined Huawei or other companies to contribute to the development of Kenya’s ICT industry. . . .Huawei is also a long-term contributor to the development of ICT talents in Kenya as a member of the Presidential Digital Talent Program’. To be sure, as King (2013) notes, these initiatives are not regarded as aid from donors, rather, they are framed within a logic of synergy that spans beyond economy and comes to encompasses the cultural sphere of mutual understanding between China and Kenya.

However, what remains to be seen is the effective impact that this training has on Kenyans, as well as the effective (economic and social) return Huawei gets from such initiatives. In fact, not only do managerial roles in Chinese ICT companies remain heavily occupied by Chinese people (Makundi et al., 2016), but the knowledge transfer that such training provides is debatable, varying according to the companies involved and the countries studied. Some scholars have found the benefits of such knowledge transfer to be limited (Cheru and Obi, 2010; Gagliardone, 2019; Shen, 2013; Taylor, 2006), while others are rather supportive of it (Agbebi, 2018; Gu, 2009; Li, 2007; Musyimi et al., 2018). A balanced summary comes from King (2010: 494), who notes that ‘there are different approaches to overtime and working hours, as well as to timing and target orientation. There is recognition by Chinese officials that the transfer of Chinese labour practices to Kenya can lead to friction, and they provide advice about this. On the other hand, there seems to be a good deal of admiration for the Chinese determination to start and finish a job on time and on budget’.

One way to look at the impact of Huawei training and formation in Kenya – beyond or even before further ethnographic research – it to look at how the Chinese company promotes its training and formation on social networks (SNSs) and how such communication is perceived and responded to by African users.

Facebook and Twitter are two widely popular social networking sites (SNSs). Facebook is by far the most popular SNS globally. In fact, at the end of 2019, Facebook counted 2.45 billion active users each month (Statista, 2019a). Twitter, on the other hand, had 330 million active users on a monthly basis. The breaking down of these data in terms of demographics shows a parallelism by age: the majority of users on both Facebook (57%) and Twitter (54%) are aged between 18 and 34 (Statista, 2019b, 2019c). However, Twitter is, above all, popular among powerbrokers, celebrities and political leaders, while Facebook appeals to a transversal audience (Sprout Social, 2018). This is because of the different functionalities and relations that the two platforms support. While Facebook is a space that favours the building of symmetric relations (Halpern et al., 2017; Smith et al., 2012), Twitter is a less reciprocal space and promotes asymmetric relationships (Davenport et al., 2014; Kwon et al., 2014; Logan, 2014). This also means that Facebook privileges more the peer-to-peer social side of sharing, while Twitter’s communication is conceived as a top-down, matter-of-fact delivery of information (also due to the limitation of the number of characters that can be used in a tweet). Moreover, Twitter fosters a much faster communicative environment than Facebook, one in which influencers and businesses can hone and spread their message rapidly across their followers’ base, while Facebook foregrounds the enjoyment of moments of deeper engagement with one’s friends network (Sprout Social, 2018). In fact, research that examines the profiling of users on the two platforms (Hughes et al., 2012) finds that Twitter followers use the platform when consciously looking for information, while Facebook users tend to use the platform for a less conscientious and more socialised – and thus more accommodative – sharing of opinions.

Huawei has launched a number of accounts on both Facebook and Twitter over time. These can be differentiated geographically (continents, regions, states) or according to their thematic focus (‘mobile’, ‘IT service’, ‘Enterprise’, ‘Facts’). The focus of the present analysis is mainly on the accounts ‘Huawei Southern Africa’, ‘Huawei Kenya’ on Facebook and Twitter and ‘Huawei ICT Academy’ on Facebook.¹ Overall, these accounts were surveyed over a period of 3 months (mid-March 2019 to mid-June 2019); this time frame was relevant also because it was in mid-May 2019 that the United States imposed a commercial ban on Huawei, which had economic repercussions worldwide (for an in-depth discussion, see Calzati, 2020).

All posts on all accounts were screenshotted and categorised (Table 1) according to their theme (validation was strengthened by cross-referencing among the accounts), in line with existing studies (Calzati and Simanowski, 2018; Hatzithomas et al., 2016; Roshan et al., 2016; Yuan, 2019). Then, following the discussion in the previous section, posts pertaining to ‘identity’ and ‘sales’ were ascribed to ‘Corporate Ability’; posts tagged as ‘training/recruit’, ‘CSR’ and ‘competition’ were subsumed under ‘Corporate Social Responsibility’ insofar as they all foreground the social-community commitment of the company more than its core business; and ‘event’- and ‘project’-related posts were considered as ‘hybrid’, a mix of both social and business. As for posts dedicated to the US-Huawei crisis, this constituted, in fact, a different realm of corporate communication in that the ‘normal’ flux of posting was disrupted by an exterior unexpected episode Hence these posts were categorised, but not included specifically in the analysis.

Next, a high-level analysis was conducted in which posts were categorised according to broad thematic categories without delving into the specific topic of each post, thus also leaving to further research a possible discourse analysis.

Subsequently, for each post, the number of ‘likes’, ‘comments’ and ‘shares’ were recorded in order to get an overview on which posts were the most engaging on each account and depending on the SNS platform used. It must be noted that it could be the case, at least in theory, that non-Kenyans replied to Huawei’s posts, which could then lead to debates or even online contestation. Given the limited number of followers of Huawei’s Kenyan accounts, the thematic ‘locality’ of the posts, and the overall lack of contestation, it was assumed throughout the analysis that the engagement did come indeed from Kenyans.

With specific regard to the account, ‘Huawei ICT Academy’, a sentiment analysis of the comments on the most commented training-related post was conducted. This allowed for a deeper assessment of the engagement and ‘mood’ of the users (beyond mere likes and sharing) with regard to the way in which Huawei training initiatives are perceived and responded to by users.

Table 2 provides a schema of the major accounts surveyed. The date of creation of each account, the current number of followers (as of September 2019) and, in the case of Twitter, the overall number of tweets and likes for each account (such data is not provided openly by Facebook) are singled out.

The two accounts ‘Huawei Southern Africa’ on Facebook and Twitter give discursive shape to an interregional dimension that, while not encompassing the whole Africna continent, may be said to coincide with the sub-Saharan African countries.

By looking at the distribution of posts across all the identified categories, it can be suggested that Huawei tends to adopt a ‘hybrid’ strategy on these accounts. This trend goes against existing literature (Kim et al., 2014; Tao and Wilson, 2015), according to which such a strategy is the least adopted online by companies.

Events are particularly relevant on Twitter, possibly due to the immediacy promoted by the platform, which makes it easier to follow live an event and/or have it rapidly retweeted by other accounts. Projects, on the other hand, are more numerous on Facebook, and a reason for that might be that these posts contain a more ‘static’ type of content, that is based on descriptions more than interactions, and eventually more fitted to a platform like Facebook.

At the same time, although SNSs may be regarded as tools in the hands of the company for consolidating its brand image – for example, ‘identity’ posts – and/or for disseminating information about initiatives that foreground the company’s social commitment towards the community – for example, ‘CSR’ posts – Huawei tends to do this minimally on both Facebook and Twitter. This might be due to the meso interregional dimension of the accounts, which, by blurring geographical boundaries, makes it hard to develop highly adaptive communication strategies.

When considering the engagement, both in total and per post, Huawei’s communication on Facebook is more aligned with what users demand, in comparison with Twitter, where the divergence between the quantity of posts for each category and the amount of feedback received, especially per single post, signals that the communication may need some adjustments to become more effective. Notably, the great interest of Facebook users in posts dedicated to ‘competitions’ and ‘projects’ is symptomatic of the fact that the platform is perceived and used as a social and entertaining space (Hughes et al., 2012). At the same time, however, the limited amount of feedback received by ‘CSR’ posts may induce the company to open a thematic account, with the goal of reframing their corporate social responsibility communication regarding SSA.

On the other hand, Twitter is a more business-related space (Kwon et al., 2014; Logan, 2014). In this respect, posts dedicated to ‘events’ and ‘projects’ fit well into the platform’s focus, while the company might think of stressing more its brand-related posts. At the same time, the limited interest stirred by ‘training/recruit’ posts, which are directed towards users who are (still) out of the platform target audience, could make Huawei consider the possibility of posting this kind of content on Facebook only.

It is also significant that posts dedicated to ‘sale’ are those mostly commented upon on both platforms. Beyond the marketing potential of SNSs, these data suggest that product- or service-related posts are significant for seeing the company’s online exposition increased. This trend diverges from the findings of existing literature (Yuan, 2019), according to which, on Facebook, ‘events’attract the most response from users, while on Twitter, it is sale-related content that accounts for the highest amount of feedback.

Concerning ‘Huawei Kenya’, the fact that posting on a regular basis on both platforms began only with the launch of ‘Huawei Kenya’ on Twitter – 55 months later than Facebook – is symptomatic of the company’s new corporate online communication strategy. At the same time, this strategy might need to be better integrated across platforms because, as was the case with ‘Huawei Southern Africa’, contrasting trends can be detected. Again, it was on Facebook that the communication was more aligned to the taste of the users, while on Twitter, the categories with more posts were not those that attracted the most attention.

Indeed, while ‘projects’, the category notching up most posts on both platforms, is appealing to Facebook users, it is not so for Twitter users. Similarly, ‘CSR’ posts stir more interest on Facebook than on Twitter and yet they are published equally on both platforms.

Overall, on ‘Huawei Kenya’ too, the company’s communication results are ‘hybrid’. Given the limited number of posts focused expressly on Kenya, the suggestion would be to polarise the two platforms, favouring a CSR-based communication on Facebook and a CA-based communication on Twitter.

Focusing specifically on ‘training/recruit’ posts, they strike the average across all categories in terms of quantity on both accounts on both platforms. On ‘Huawei Southern Africa’, we have 19 posts (nine on Facebook and ten on Twitter) out of 158 posts; on ‘Huawei Kenya’, we have 17 posts (seven on Facebook and 11 on Twitter) out of 132 posts.

As for the engagement, on both Facebook and Twitter, users seem mildly attracted by these posts. This is particularly evident on Twitter with regard to the engagement stirred by each post, which positions ‘training/recruit’ posts second last on ‘Huawei Southern Africa’ and in fifth place on ‘Huawei Kenya’. This suggests that, despite being posted more on Twitter, ‘training/recruit’ posts are definitely a Facebook ‘thing’ in that they promote bonds between the company and prospective employees by foregrounding the testimonies of previous or ongoing trainees. This is the reason why it would be preferable for the company to channel ‘training/recruiting’ posts only on a socially focused platform like Facebook and on state-level accounts.

Concerning the account ‘Huawei ICT Academy’, two main content categories were identified: ‘training’ and ‘competition’. While the latter was the most conspicuous of the two categories, engagement per post showed a more balanced ratio, with ‘training’ posts being less shared, but more commented upon than ‘competition’ ones (likes being similar across the two categories). In terms of geopolitical segmentation of the posts’ content, the majority of posts had a ‘global’ dimension, while none referred to Southern Africa. On the one hand, this data highlighted the global outreach of the account, while, on the other, it is worth noting the stress put by the company on Latin America in comparison to the SSA countries, especially considering that investments are significant in both regions.

When compared to the other accounts, ‘Huawei ICT Academy’ stirred a stronger engagement from users. There are two main reasons for that: (1) the account is thematic, meaning that users already know what kind of information to expect when following it. In other words, the audience is fidelized ex principio and more likely to express interest; and (2) the account is open on Facebook only, and on it the company unfolds a CSR-based communication strategy that demands the interaction of users. This is also why the posts dedicated to training are heavily commented upon and in a positive manner, as derived from the sentiment analysis.

Overall, it must be noted that, similar to what existing literature suggests (Nip and Sun, 2018), Huawei refrained to reply to comments on its SNS accounts, thus missing the chance (or consciously avoiding) to engage with the users. This was particularly evident on ‘Huawei Southern Africa’ and ‘Huawei Kenya’ on both platforms, where Huawei never replied to comments. By contrast, this occurred on ‘Huawei ICT Academy’, given the interactive nature of the posts, but Huawei did so minimally.

The objective of the article was two-fold: (1) to explore the online communication strategy of the Chinese company Huawei in relation to SSA and especially concerning its training and recruiting initiatives; and (2) to explore how African – especially Kenyan – SNS users reacted to the communication of these initiatives. Two platforms – Facebook and Twitter – and three accounts – ‘Huawei Southern Africa’, ‘Huawei Kenya’ and ‘Huawei ICT Academy’ – were considered, conducting a high-level thematic analysis of the posts published over 3 months (mid-March to mid-June 2019), as well as a sentiment analysis of the post on ‘Huawei ICT Academy’ stirring up most interactions from users (comments on the other accounts were so limited that a thematic analysis was sufficient).

Overall, the analysis showed that Huawei’s online communication on SNSs is not coherently planned across accounts and platforms, as it tends to disregard users’ engagement, especially on Twitter. In fact, communication was most successful when dealing with ‘CSR’- or ‘hybrid’-related posts on Facebook, while on Twitter, it was the ‘Corporate Ability’ posts that were the most appealing (in line with the features and audiences of the two platforms).

It is also worth noting that since mid-November 2019 (a few months after collection of the data), the ‘Southern Africa’ account on Facebook was taken down (it remains in place on Twitter). This strengthens the evidence that Huawei’s communication strategy on SNSs is not integrated, but subject to a degree of autonomy across accounts and platforms. The (somewhat paradoxical) impossibility of contacting Huawei on SNSs for asking to elaborate on these issues, not only leaves room for supposing that the accounts might be managed by different teams, but also reasserts the predominantly one-way conception and use of these channels by the company.

Looking specifically at ‘training/recruit’ posts, on average, they elicited a stronger response on the state-level accounts as compared to the interregional one, even though the overall engagement was mild. The analysis also showed that these posts are more suited for Facebook than Twitter. It was indeed on the thematic account ‘Huawei ICT Academy’, which is found only on Facebook, that users showed warm interest and offered highly positive comments to ‘competition’ and ‘training/recruit’ initiatives.

The analysis encompassed, overall, a rather limited period of time (3 months). In this sense, it might be useful to extend or replicate the longitudinal analysis over longer periods of time or also during different times in the year, so as to further compare the results. Moreover, despite the fact that various topic categories were identified based on a preliminary parsing of the accounts, the study remained at a high level of thematic analysis, without digging into the specific topic of each post. In this sense, to conduct a discourse analysis of the collected posts (and their comments) might provide new insights that intersect the findings discussed here in new ways. Lastly, it would be advisable to extend the designed analysis to SNSs other than Facebook and Twitter, especially those on which Huawei and Africans are mostly active, in order to assess the platform-specificity of the present results.