Generous Alibaba to scatter 0.9% of annual revenue over Southeast Asia to develop tech talent and infrastructure

1 Copy Alibaba proclaimed at its Cloud Summit 2021 that it is ploughing $1bn into “Project AsiaForward”, an initiative focused on expansion and development in Southeast Asia. The project includes training, partnerships with universities, and infrastructure development. The Chinese e-commerce company said today it hoped the cash pot would “cultivate a million-strong digital talent pool, empower 100,000 developers and the growth of 100,000 technology startups in Asia Pacific (APAC) over the next three years.” The 100,000 developers would receive training for general cloud skillsets like PolarDB, Alibaba’s open-source database platform. Alibaba has already opened its third data centre in Indonesia…