By Adeleke Adefioye
REPORTS have revealed that Egypt’s overall economy expanded by 4.7 percent in the fiscal year through June, driven by the expansion of its ICT sector which grew by 14.6 percent.
In the past year, Egypt has strengthened its position as one of the world’s fastest growing outsourcing destinations through a number of international Memorandum of Understandings and investment in the country’s ICT infrastructure and education.
Commenting on the growth of the sector, Dr. Hazem Abdelazim, CEO of the country’s Information Technology Industry Development Agency said, “We have seen huge growth in our ICT sector over the past year, despite the globally challenging financial climate, more than 10 multinational companies have expanded or outsourced their business to Egypt in the past 12 months and we are continuing to support the development of the industry through investment in infrastructure and education.”
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.
In June, Egypt’s Minister of Communication and Information Technology, Dr. Tarek Kamel, joined executives from Cisco, Xceed and the Information Technology Industry Development Agency (ITIDA) to formally inaugurate an international contact center for Cisco® customer service and support for customers in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and emerging markets. Google recently signed a USD$10 million contract regarding business and workforce development in Egypt and HSBC is opening a regional contact center there in 2010.
