CAIRO: “I think we have more opportunities than challenges [for the IT industry] in Egypt. …It’s exciting because the scalability and numbers are…massive,” said Wael Fakharany, regional manager of Google in the Middle East.
With 19 million students, 22 million internet users, 6 million mobile internet users and 61 million mobiles, he added, even a small percentage represents a wide scale information technology (IT) and intellectual property development base.
In an interview with Daily News Egypt, Fakharany said, “We have been quite vocal about our monetizing products but it’s time to talk to other segments of society, people who do research and development, work on IT innovations and develop intellectual property,” he said.
In line these plans, Google will host its first ‘”G-Egypt” event from Dec. 8-10, where executives will meet with computer science students, software developers, small businesses and tech entrepreneurs. Google will demonstrate its suite of products that are driving innovation in technology and business across the globe and here in the Middle East.
“I see a lot of hungry and striving young dynamic kids, whose talent just needs to be incubated,” Fakharany said.
“The objectives of these three days are to start a vibrant tech community and establish a connection between us and them. My dream is to have the next big thing in IT — Facebook, Twitter or something like that coming from this part of the world,” he added.
Day one of G-Egypt will target academia, discussing with professors and university students some of Google’s most powerful technologies and coding languages for building online and mobile applications.
According to Fakharany, 30 Google engineers and product managers from all over the globe will share their knowledge and answer questions as well as discuss existing Google student outreach programs and opportunities that Egyptian students can harness.
Day two will target software developers. “It’s one of our best kept secrets that we have many tools that are completely free of charge for software developers that we haven’t been vocal about,” Fakharany said.
On this day, Google engineers and web developers will lead participants through one full day of in-depth sessions on the latest Google technologies and hands-on codelabs and bring developers together to share their own ideas.
Fakharany explained that since Google supports open source software and access to IT resources, finances and technology, its software and products could be a good self-service platform for up and coming software developers.
The third day will host entrepreneurs and business owners to discuss content creation using online tools, how to market them and how to monetize focusing toward online and mobile usage.
Fakharany credited this initiative to the fact that Google has recognized the substantial amounts of internet content which Egypt is producing.
“We believe that this is a good triangle of focus areas for fostering innovation and entrepreneurship in line with the government’s initiatives to push the envelope when it comes to IT talent in Egypt.
“It is not about the internet infrastructure anymore, the infrastructure is there, but it’s about the people using it.”
“We have never done this anywhere in the Middle East before at all and this shows how committed we are to this market. This is almost like taking the internet to the next level and it’s all about the region’s potential,” he concluded.
