South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said Friday at a conference focusing on the 4th Industrial Revolution that his country backed China's technology giant Huawei.

A number of telecommunication companies wrote me a letter, noting that to block Huawei "is going to hurt us, because we can't go to 5G and only Huawei can lead us to 5G," said the president.

The president said his government supports a company that would take South Africa forward.

"We support a company that is going to take our country and the world to better technologies, and that is 5G. We support them," he said.