ICT for Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SME)s Project is holding a conference entitled: "SMEs and IT – A Step Forward" tomorrow in the Smart Village to celebrate the output and achievements of the past three years.
 
The conference is the first to be organized as part of the ICT for SMEs Project which is one of Egypt's ICT Trust Fund project. A joint program between Ministry of Communications and Information Technology and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). Egypt ICT Trust Fund supports SMEs across 19 governorates.
 
The conference will be held cooperatively with Canada's International Development Research Center (IDRC) and Microsoft Egypt. Representatives of the project's beneficiary SMEs, non-governmental organizations (NGO)s and other concerned international organizations will take part in the event.
 
Selected success stories of companies utilizing ICT tools in their operations will be presented during the event.
 
The conference aims at highlighting achievements of the implemented projects. Recommendations and best practices will be shared and demonstrated by the project's beneficiaries and experts from companies interested in the development of SMEs.
 
Challenges and opportunities ahead of spreading the culture of ICT in serving SMEs in Egypt and the positive solutions technology can provide to boost SMEs will also be discussed.
 
In addition, the conference will tackle sustainability means of the project as well as means of facilitating state-of-the-art ICT tools that are likely to improve the performance of Egyptian SMEs.

Egypt ICT Trust Fund
Established jointly by MCIT and UNDP in 2002, Egypt ICT Trust Fund aims to foster Egypt’s socio-economic development through a serious of coordinated initiatives and projects that utilize ICTs for the empowerment of communities through an integrated public-private partnerships model. This is achieved by increasing the awareness of ICTs and making it more acceptable and affordable to all citizens.