The Minister of Communications and Information Technology Amr Talaat has received the South African Minister of Communications, Telecommunications and Postal Services Stella Abrahams, on the sidelines of the World Radiocommunication Conference 2019 (WRC-19).

The meeting comes as South Africa eyes the chairmanship of the African Union (AU) in 2020, succeeding Egypt.

The ICT Minister underlined Egypt’s keenness on cooperating with South Arica, in light of the former’s chairmanship of the AU in 2019. He presented the efforts and accomplishments achieved this year at the regional level, and said that the two countries have potentials that distinguish them in the ICT sector.

Talaat asserted that Egypt will keep playing a leading role through cooperating with South Africa to harness the two countries potentials, such as infrastructure and submarine cables, to serve all African countries.

Moreover, the ICT Minister said that Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a possible area of cooperation with South Africa, including data centers, as the two countries can collaborate to save Africa’s data inside Africa.

The two sides also discussed cooperation in 5G policies and enhancing regional work in this field through the African Telecommunications Union (ATU), as well as the significance of drafting cooperation frameworks in a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the two countries. The importance of joint work in the field of AI uses was also discussed during the meeting.

For her part, Abrahams congratulated Egypt on TIBA-1 satellite, as Talaat confirmed that the satellite is set to serve development in Africa.

At the end of the meeting, Abrahams invited Talaat to visit South Africa to explore areas of common importance for cooperation between the two countries in ICTs.