During the Mobile World Congress (MWC 2019) in Barcelona, the Minister of Communications and Information Technology Amr Talaat has met with Côte d'Ivoire Minister of Digital Economy and Post Claude Isaac DE. They discussed enhancing cooperation between the two countries in ICT fields.
During the meeting, they represented the projects that the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT) implemented in collaboration with the state bodies and institutions to achieve digital transformation. They also discussed cooperation and exchange of expertise in achieving the transition into a digital society.
Talaat highlighted the depth of relations between Egypt and sister African countries, and the political leadership's keenness on opening new doors of cooperation and establishing more partnerships that will help all parties achieve the comprehensive development for all African nations, especially ICT. This is in addition to benefiting from the mutual experiences of the two countries in training and fostering African youth’s skills, as well as taking advantage of Egypt’s successful experience of building technology parks and smart cities.
He referred to MCIT efforts to implement the African App Launchpad (AAL) initiative, which aims at qualifying Egyptian and African youth in technological games applications, and programming various digital applications. It targets training and qualifying 10,000 Egyptian and African young people to use and employ modern technology, and establishing 100 startup companies in these fields.
Talaat has also met with Airbus Vice President and Head of Services Growth Nicolas Huguet. They discussed areas of cooperation and the possibility of establishing a common services center for Airbus in Egypt.
They also represented Egypt’s competitive advantages to host such centers, not only for ICT companies, but also for many international companies in various sectors. The referred to a number of success stories, and represented models of common services centers in Egypt.
The ICT Minister has also held a meeting with Dell EMC Vice President of Business Strategy & HPC Solutions Thierry Pellegrino and Innovation Program Manager Ahmed Osama. They discussed areas of joint cooperation in High-Performance Computing (HPC).
Talaat asked DELL for a complete project study on establishing an HPC center in Egypt, including usage models in different fields and applications such as Artificial Intelligence (AI). They also discussed expanding Dell center for innovation in Egypt and increasing the number of HPC engineers.
Furthermore, Talaat has met with American Tower Corporation (ATC) CEO in South Africa Pieter Nel, where they discussed future cooperation opportunities with ATC International to be present in the Egyptian market. ATC is a leading company in the operation and development of wireless infrastructure.
Talaat, as well, has met with ZTE Middle East and Africa Chairman Darren Chou. They discussed the company’s future plans in Egypt, and cooperation with ZTE international in capacity building, digital transformation, and infrastructure. ZTE Egypt CEO Woo Lee and Vice President Tamer Fayed attended the meeting.
ZTE operates in the development of fixed and mobile infrastructure, and providing various communications equipment, such as wireless communications systems.
The meetings were attended by a number of executive officials from MCIT, the National Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (NTRA), the Information Technology Industry Development Agency (ITIDA) and Telecom Egypt (TE).
The ICT Minister visited Cisco Barcelona Innovation Center today, where latest IT technologies are introduced. He explored a model of smart cities using AI, and discussed the possibility of transferring Cisco expertise to develop a similar center in Egypt. He also visited the newly opened center on the sidelines of Cisco World Congress.
