The Information Technology Industry Development Agency (ITIDA) has participated in the inauguration of the eighth edition of Techne Summit, held at the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization. The Summit was organized on March 26, under the auspices of the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT) and ITIDA, and in the presence of the U.S. Ambassador to Egypt Jonathan R. Cohen.
Techne Summit discussed a number of topics, including investing in developing the skills of young people as a driving force in the entrepreneurship sector and an enabler to the sustainability of startups. In addition, the Summit also tackled the rise of Venture Building in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, with the aim of fostering startups and helping them thrive and grow.
The agenda of the Summit involved several events that highlighted the growth opportunities in the promising sector of startups, as well as the challenges and obstacles that startup founders and entrepreneurs face in the growth stage and in attracting venture capital.
A large number of officials, investors, entrepreneurs, experts in technology, innovation, entrepreneurship, venture capital firms, government and private agencies, technology incubators and business accelerators participated in the Summit.
The opening remarks highlighted MCIT role, since it attaches great importance to the technological innovation and entrepreneurship sector, being the cornerstone and one of the planks of MCIT strategy, and a key pillar in ITIDA strategy.
It is noteworthy that the ICT sector enjoys annual growth of 16%, a figure expected to rise as a result of the country's efforts to achieve digital transformation and increase reliance on digital services after COVID-19, which helped increase the demand for digital skills.
So far, ITIDA has trained more than 180,000 young people on various skills, including technical, freelancing, soft and basic skills in the labor market through the Future Work is Digital (FWD) initiative. ITIDA has recently launched the second edition (FWD 2.0), after adding multi-level courses in different disciplines such as web design, web development, data analysis, cloud computing, machine learning, and programming languages for web development, such as React, in addition to digital marketing.
MCIT invests over 1.1 billion EGP in human development to meet the need and heightened demand for digital and language skills, helping keep pace with the changing IT labor market and boosting Egyptian IT exports.
On the performance of the entrepreneurship scene in Egypt, the startup ecosystem has been thriving and steadily growing over the past few years as a result of the growing entrepreneurship culture and heavy flow of foreign investments through financing and investment deals. Egypt has attracted a remarkable volume of foreign venture capital investments, since the percentage of foreign investments in startups, reaches 77%. This reflects the confidence of foreign investors and global venture capital funds in the Egyptian entrepreneurship and startup ecosystem.
ITIDA, in cooperation with Deloitte, has forged a far-reaching five-year strategy, funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The strategy stands on four main pillars: boosting and advancing the startup ecosystem, facilitating startups’ access to funds and capital, developing technological skills and increasing the number of professionals while creating an environment conducive to entrepreneurship and creative thinking, and facilitating penetration into global markets through a plan for promotion and marketing on a global level.
ITIDA collaborates with several partners to conduct a study to identify investment-related challenges in the startup ecosystem. It will announce a set of measures addressing the shortcomings in the ecosystem, facilitating procedures of founding startups, and regulating their relations with investors.
On the sidelines of Techne Summit, ITIDA held a roundtable titled “Egypt's Investment Landscape in 2022”. Several investors and regional and international venture capitalists joined the roundtable.
It is worth noting that ITIDA strives to improve Egypt’s regional and global standing and achieve global reach by encouraging and attracting more venture capital firms and investment funds to Egyptian startups. This is in addition to helping startups penetrate markets, creating an enabling environment for innovation, and reaching out to startups outside Cairo—where most startups (approximately 93%) are currently based—by establishing CREATIVA Innovation Hubs on a widescale, in universities and governorates.
