The strength of the relations between the U.S. and Egypt on a business level has never been better, and Egypt is primed to increase the volume of its IT/ITES exports to US$1.1 billion by 2010.
This was the message communicated by His Excellency Dr. Tarek Kamel, Egyptian Minister of Communications & Information Technology at a special luncheon hosted by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Business Council for International Understanding (BCIU), and the American Chamber of Commerce in Egypt (AmCham Egypt), in Washington, DC. Also attending this luncheon were Mr. Aneesh Chopra, U.S. Chief Technology Officer, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and Mr. Richard Patterson, Vice President of Global Delivery, IBM During the visit to New York and Washington, DC, Dr. Kamel and Information Technology Industry Development Agency (ITIDA) officials met with senior business executives from top Fortune 100 companies like Board Chairman and CEO of IBM Corp Samuel J. Palmisano to discuss new business, technology innovation and future opportunities to collaborate in Egypt.
Egypt has been highly aggressive over the past decade in delivering on major infrastructure, bandwidth, educational and telecommunications projects to drive increased interest in companies looking to establish major global service delivery centers in the country.
“Egypt is now at the new crossroads for next stage in the IT revolution,” said Dr. Kamel. “With a long history of innovation, we are a young, energetic country with a population that grew up in the technology world, so we’ve keyed some of the specific goals as a nation around technology — being a hub for innovation and research, cyber security and cross-border collaboration.”
Egypt is located on the paths of most optical cables linking Africa and Asia with Europe and North America. Egypt has also developed fiber connectivity with its neighbors, which makes it a prime location for transient traffic to the region. With the only direct connection from the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea, Egypt is also strategically positioned to be a manufacturing, logistics and distribution hub for Europe and the Middle East.
“Many people do not realize that we are a multi-stakeholder country – English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch and Arabic are all common languages that are currently serviced out of Egypt. So many companies across Europe and the Middle East come to Egypt and are very comfortable with the language, culture and communications,” Dr. Kamel continued.
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