Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi on Sunday met with Vodafone Group CEO Nick Reed and Vodafone Egypt’s CEO Mohamed AbdAllah to review the joint cooperation in the telecommunications sector, asserting Egypt’s keenness to enhance cooperation with international companies that have long-standing experience.
During his meeting, Al Sisi expressed the government’s keenness to promote Vodafone’s investments in the fields of communications, digital transformation, and modern technological systems, in line with the state’s plan for digitisation and comprehensive development.
For his part, Reed said that Egypt is witnessing a comprehensive development process, reflecting wide opportunities for investments. He expressed his company’s eagerness to expand its activities in Egypt, as one of the largest markets in the region in the telecommunications and information technology sector.
The information technology sector can contribute to achieving financial inclusion and sustainable development, developing public services, and providing new job opportunities, Vodafone Group CEO explained.
Reed asserted that the balanced and wise measures taken by Egypt to address the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic have contributed to preserving the economic, commercial, and service activities in the country and achieving positive growth rates.
He pointed out that Vodafone will conduct an operational trial of the 5G mobile network in the New Administrative Capital, benefiting from its modern infrastructure.
In a separate meeting, Al-Sisi followed up on the progress of national projects related to the communications and information technology sector. He directed for promoting of the country’s digital infrastructure. Al-Sisi
During a meeting with Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly and Minister of Communications and Information Technology Amr Talaat, Al-Sisi ordered the government to train government employees on digital services to support government performance, in order to achieve digital inclusion and consolidate the rules of digital economy.
Moreover, Talaat presented his ministry’s artificial intelligence (AI) strategy which aims at raising the governmental performance, as well as the ministry’s efforts to develop the Internet infrastructure to absorb the increased consumption in the household sector as more people tend to work or study from home during the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, according to the presidency spokesperson Bassam Rady.
Al-Sisi also followed up on the development plan of 1,600 post offices nationwide, in which these offices will be equipped with banking and notary services, in addition to microfinance, consumer finance, micro-insurance, and mobile wallet.
In a different context, Minister Talaat said that the New Administrative Capital has been named as the First Arab Digital Capital for 2021 by the Council of Arab Ministers of Communications and Information Technology.
He explained that this announcement will shed light on the amount of development achievements in the information technology infrastructure in Egypt. He added that Egypt has jumped to the 56th place in the global ranking on the Government AI Readiness Index 2020.
