The Ministry of Communications and Information Technology is pursuing an ambitious strategy to cultivate a digital Egypt, aiming to develop the digital infrastructure, achieve financial inclusion, and build capabilities for the transition to a digital society. To implement this vision; the ministry has launched many initiatives and projects in cooperation with major international companies.

These endeavors have begun to bear fruit despite the current challenges of the economic situation, as the communications and information technology sector has maintained high growth rates, and Egypt has become an attractive hub for many major corporations. Furthermore, there has been progress in digital exports and the development of a skilled workforce.

In this context, Canada Egypt Business Council and the Egyptian Business Council for International Cooperation held a seminar entitled “The Role of the Communications and Information Technology Sector in Supporting the Economy” featuring H.E. Amr Talaat ,Minister of Communications and Information Technology

In his opening remarks, Mr. Motaz Raslan; chairman of CEBC and ECIC mentioned that  the telecommunications and information technology sector in Egypt is one of the most important sectors to support the national economy, which has witnessed tremendous growth despite all the challenges facing the Egyptian economy, and the sector maintained its solidity, achieving a growth of 16.7 %, to become the highest growth among all sectors of the state during five consecutive years, His contribution to the national product reaches 5%, and our guest, Minister Amr Talaat is one of the personalities that determine its goals and start towards it without stopping, and statistics confirm this, we were in 2019 talking about 20 digital government services, while we are now talking about 165 services, as Digital exports jumped to $ 4.9 billion despite the challenges of the global economy.

Eng. Motaz added “Our guest today is moving at a steady pace and working hard to build digital Egypt through a package of initiatives and projects that began with developing the digital infrastructure, improving the communications network, training human cadres capable of doing so, and attracting international companies to localize advanced industries. Indeed, the three major companies were attracted to manufacture phones.” Mobile phones and tablet computers. The Information Technology Industry Development Authority (ITIDA) also succeeded, through the incentives it granted, in signing agreements with 48 international companies during the year 2022 and establishing outsourcing centers or expanding their centers. We are pleased to host H.E. Dr. Amr Talaat, Minister of Communications and Information Technology, to talk to us about the role of this. The sector in supporting the economy at this critical stage, the most important plans and goals of the ministry, when the dream of digital Egypt will be achieved, and the most important opportunities available to this group of investors and businessmen”.

H.E. Dr. Amr Talaat; Minister of Communications and Information Technology commenced his speech stressing that within the framework of the strategy of building digital Egypt, we are working on three simultaneous and parallel goals, and we always seek to achieve them by creating jobs in light of the knowledge economy and providing and making government services available to citizens in a digitized, governed, easy, and organized manner. We also seek to develop the export capabilities of the communications and information technology sector and then narrow Or bridging the gap in the trade balance between exports and imports, so that the ICT sector can make a leap to narrow the hard currency gap and the dollar balance gap in the Egyptian economy. Here I start with the first axis, which is digital transformation. We began months ago to build what we call the information infrastructure. Egyptian, and perhaps this is not clear to those outside the communications and information technology sector, but we have a link to all the Egyptian government databases and this produces what we call an integrated, monitored picture of services.

The minister added: “ The service, and we had about 8000 or 9000 mobile towers in 2018, while we reached more than 34,000 towers by the end of this year, and the frequency spectra – which is expired by the mobile companies by about $ 2.5 billion, was increased during the past three years, then With the development of Egypt’s digital strategy, we must restore the role of the Egyptian post, especially with a period that witnessed a decline in the transfer of paper messages with the progress of technology, which is less than the return, and we entered the era of e -commerce, and then we must develop the regular transportation system, firmly with postal services Sophisticated is consistent with the current era, and is consistent with technology data and innovations, which is the first axis for the development of mail”.

H.E. Dr. Amr Talaat continued: “In the second axis, we have provided packages of financial services that suit customers who deal with Egypt Post, including micro-lending, micro-insurance, investment lending, and other postal services that are of interest to citizens. We now have more than 40,000,000 citizens dealing with Egyptian Post, and we are moving to… The third axis is preparing the postal digital infrastructure to be a window to all government services. The Egyptian Post had approximately 3,700 offices when we started the strategy in 2018, and today we have more than 4,500 offices”.

The Minister concluded his speech stressing that with regard to Haya Karima project, the Ministry was able to achieve a breakthrough in the various elements of the information infrastructure that reached all village homes, and was done with fiber optic cables. In my estimation, this is one of the most important projects that took place or is taking place in the communications sector, as we were able providing internet access services through high-speed internet to every home in every village in Egypt through Haya Karima project in its three stages. We were in front of more than 9,000,000 homes inhabited by more than 60,000,000 citizens, and they now have the ability to access the internet through fixed internet. In addition to the job opportunities, training opportunities, networking opportunities, and opportunities to learn about events in the world.

Then the floor was opened for questions and answers where many inquiries and ideas were discussed by the participants of the seminar.