Barcelona- The Minister of Communications and Information Technology, Amr Talaat, held several meetings with key officials and chiefs of international firms in communication and information technology, where he discussed developing the communications sector in Egypt.
During his participation in the Mobile World Congress 2019, Talaat met with the World Bank’s Vice President for Infrastructure, Makhtar Diop, where they discussed ways to boost cooperation between the World Bank and Egypt’s Information Technology Industry Development Agency (ITIDA).
The minister proposed hiring an international firm as a consultant to implement a comprehensive national strategy to increase the Egyptian information technology exports to the global market.
The strategy is based on assessing Egypt’s competitive advantage in information technology as well as the service’s providers, determining key constraints for growth and how to overcome them, and studying the targeted markets for exports.
The strategy aims to boost the Egyptian exports, turning Egypt into an international hub for digital services and an attractive destination for emerging technologies centres, including artificial intelligence, 5G services, and information security.
On the sidelines of the four-day congress, from 25 to 28 February, the minister met with Göran Marby, the CEO of Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), where they discussed the importance of governments’ role in ICANN. They also reviewed the strategic plan of ICANN within the period between 2021 and 2025.
Talaat stressed the importance of developing the Domain Name System (DNS) in Egypt and stimulate the suitable atmosphere for this industry by improving the local content and online services. He also asserted Egypt’s keenness on being an affective member of the Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC), a specified committee to review governments’ vision toward internet resource management.
ICANN is a non-profit institution that includes members from all over the world, entitled of protecting the internet security and efficiency in the world.
Moreover, Talaat met with Saleh Al Abdooli, the CEO of Etisalat, to discuss the company’s plan to provide local voice call services, and improving their services inside Egyptian compounds, especially after granting the company a license to establish and operate telecommunications services inside compounds with the National Telecom Regulatory Authority (NTRA) in February.
The meeting tackled improving the money-transfer services provided by communication companies, as one of the key axes in enhancing state’s strategy in spreading the concept of financial inclusion.
He also met with the CEO of PCCW, Marc Halbfinger, to enhance cooperation in marine cables and information technology fields. He sat with the executive director of technology at Software AG, the German firm working in programming sector, where Talaat proposed establishing subsidiary company in Egypt to develop programming works, and another centre to support IT services.
The minister visited Huawei’s pavilion at an exhibition on the congress’s sidelines, where he was briefed on the latest technologies introduced by the Chinese technology giant.
Huawei signed a memorandum of understanding with Telecom Egypt on Monday to set up in Egypt the first computing cloud in Africa and the Middle East.
