Huawei has opened an innovation center in Belgrade, providing another boost to Serbia's flourishing tech industry. 

The Huawei Digitalization and Innovation Center will focus on identifying new talent - individuals, startups, or just local companies with great ideas, and help them to develop.

Huawei's Regional Director, Li Mengqun, believes the partnership will help Serbia to bolster its position as one of the world's leading IT players.

He said: "Serbia has a remarkable system for nurturing talent and innovation. Together with local partners, we want to create a digital eco-system and help achieve Serbia's digital transformation goals."

Menqun says plans are already afoot for Huawei to begin work alongside Serbia's finest IT talent on two exciting new technologies. 

He added: "The IT and e-governance office, working together with Huawei, will build a smart education platform very soon with virtual desktop infrastructure. Then we'll start gradually introducing an artificial intelligence technology."

Meanwhile, the move has been welcomed by one of the country's leading IT firms. Sasa Popovic, CEO and co-founder of Vega IT Solutions, which is based in the tech hub of Novi Sad, says it's important for Serbia to continue investing in the sector.

"We believe that the two most important things for our country to prosper in the future are education and entrepreneurship," he said. "People from abroad like to work with Serbian IT companies. They know that they get really exceptional software engineers and really good technical solutions."

The IT industry contributes six percent to Serbia's GDP, and the authorities hope that in the next few years it will overtake agriculture. Huawei's innovation center is expected to help them meet that goal.

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