AmCham Egypt held its annual general meeting on May 29 at the Four Seasons Nile Plaza Hotel, with guest speaker Tarek Kamel, minister of communications and information technology.

AmCham president Omar Mohanna began the event by offering special recognition to the Chamber’s long-standing members. He described how AmCham has grown significantly during its existence from a few hundred members in the early 1980s to over 1,500 members today.

Kamel took the podium to speak about the role of information and communication technology (ICT) in the country’s economy and the challenges that lie ahead. He began by describing the ICT sector within the economy at large. “The ICT sector is playing a pivotal role in overall socioeconomic development in Egypt,” he said. “Egypt enjoys, as we all know, an economic reform program that has been quite successful, according to all macroeconomic indicators... Indeed, the ICT sector has been one of the sectors playing a catalyst role in the overall development of the economy.”

Moreover, the ICT sector has accomplished a remarkable turnaround, Kamel noted. It has transformed itself “from a sector that was looking for subsidies and donations from donor organizations to a sector that is really a net contributor to the treasury.”

ICT has contributed over LE 28 billion to the national economy in the last two and a half years, according to Kamel. Much of this revenue was generated by the initial public offering (IPO) of Telecom Egypt, the sale of a third mobile license to UAE-based Etisalat, and the purchase of 3G licenses by incumbent operators Mobinil and Vodafone.

The ICT sector’s achievements validate the government’s overall economic strategy, Kamel said. “I believe that this is a message that privatization and deregulation, when managed in a phased and balanced approach, really pay off for all players, including the public treasury, consumers that are getting new services and, last but not least... businesses.”

As a measure of success, inexpensive Internet access is now widely available across the country, even in rural and remote areas, Kamel said. This is important because Internet connectivity entails far-reaching educational and social benefits, he noted.

The government has introduced educational initiatives that promote technology, such as the Egyptian Education Initiative (EEI), a public-private partnership that has, among other things, trained 45,000 teachers in digital literacy, provided 900 schools with ADSL and delivered over 39,000 personal computers to schools. ICT is also moving into other fields, such as improving healthcare services. But the sector also contributes to society by creating jobs, as the industry has evolved into a regional heavyweight working in collaboration with corporate partners. “We started with Microsoft, Oracle, Intel, IBM and several other players, and it worked successfully. We have created out of Egypt a platform for exporting services to neighboring countries,” Kamel said.

The minister believes there is room for further growth, with more ICT companies to be drawn to Egypt’s human capital and favorable investment conditions. “The government is providing a full package of incentives, starting with excellent infrastructure, excellent connectivity at affordable and very competitive prices, as well as training and investment in human resources development programs, in order to make sure that our workforce is really competitive and [has] the [qualifications] that the rest of the world is looking for.”

Specifically, Kamel invited international players here to establish call centers, technical support centers, remote service centers and online centers. The country’s large number of university graduates, many of whom are multilingual, is further reason to invest here, he said.

At the same time, the country must press ahead and ensure that its people are well trained on a global level, Kamel said. “Egypt needs to make sure that it is ready with the right human resources in [various] disciplines in order to compete. And I think we need to invest in university curricula, as well as in training graduates on a larger scale to make sure that they are competitive.”

Meanwhile, Kamel noted that shifting demographics abroad, particularly aging populations in Europe, could work to the country’s advantage. Egypt is a young country that has the manpower to perform back-office operations through the Internet. “Technology is helping us,” he said. “Information is becoming ubiquitous. Bandwidth is becoming more and more cost-effective and there are some people even talking about ‘zero cost’ bandwidth by 2015 or 2017.”

Another challenge facing Egypt is cyber-security. It is a global concern, Kamel explained, that has emerged over the last five or six years in response to online crimes, such as cyber-terrorism, digital identity theft, money laundering and child pornography.

Egypt must face these issues directly, Kamel insisted. “We in Egypt cannot isolate ourselves from what’s going on in the rest of the world. We have to engage ourselves in these discussions. Egypt, by nature, is not an exporter of cyber-crime, but Egypt could be subject to cyber-crime while the world is becoming more and more open and more and more [integrated].”

A third challenge highlighted was the need to put more Arabic-language content online. Native Arabic speakers account for as much as 6 percent of the world’s population, but the language represents less than half a percent of Internet content. “There is some mismatch and we need to make sure that we put our cultural heritage, and our culture, which we are very proud of, on the Internet and make it available to youth to [preserve] the cultural identity of this population. We urge our younger generation to connect with the rest of the world and to interact with the rest of the world, but we want them as well to be aware of their cultural [and linguistic] identity.”

Doing so will require that the regulatory framework and business partnerships are in place to allow more Arabic content online, Kamel concluded. “And this is the responsibility of the whole society – NGOs, multinationals, the national private sector and the government. It’s not about one single ministry; it’s about an activity and endeavor for all of us.”

Following his remarks, Kamel answered questions from audience members on different topics, including the government’s policy towards social networking website Facebook, supporting local ICT companies, the undersea cables severed in late January, the expansion of Smart Village, a second fixed-line operator and efforts to promote Egypt’s ICT sector in the US.

Mohanna presented Kamel with an AmCham Special Achievement Award and an honorary membership in recognition of his contributions in the field of ICT. This annual award is given to an AmCham member who has demonstrated outstanding achievements in furthering Egypt-US relations, has received prestigious international awards or who performs exceptional service to the community. The recipient is selected by the AmCham board of governors.

During the Annual General Meeting, AmCham recognized its corporate partners. Arab Bank, Bavarian Auto Group, BP Egypt, Commercial Internationbal Bank (CIB), Coca-Cola Egypt – Atlantic Industries, ExxonMobil Egypt, Microsoft – Egypt, Mobinil and Xerox were all recognized for their continued support to the Chamber.