The Minister of Communications and Information Technology Amr Talaat met today with the Saudi Minister of Communications and Information Technology Abdullah bin Amer Alswaha, in the presence of the Egyptian Ambassador to Saudi Arabia Ahmed Farouk.
They discussed cooperation between the two countries in a number of ICT topics, the most prominent of which were capacity building, digital economy and e-payments.
The meeting comes on the sidelines of Talaat’s visit to Saudi Arabia to chair the 46th Ordinary Session of the Executive Bureau of the Arab Telecommunications and Information Council of Ministers (ATICM), and participate in ATICM 23rd session, on December 17-18.
During the meeting, the two ministers inked a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to enhance cooperation between the two countries in ICT and leverage cooperation in attaining Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to benefit the citizens of both countries.
As per the three-year MoU, areas of cooperation between the two countries include capacity building, innovation and entrepreneurship, Artificial Intelligence (AI), digital awareness and digital transformation.
The two sides agreed on building youth’s digital capacities through establishing cooperation between the Saudi Digital Academy (SDA) in Saudi Arabia and the Information Technology Institute (ITI) in Egypt. The aim is to develop training curricula in specific tracks pertaining to advanced technologies, keeping abreast with the Fourth Industrial Revolution. These technologies include smart devices applications, digital game development, user interface development, machine code, open-source software development, data science and analysis, cloud computing, web and multimedia development.
Cooperation in this area also includes exchange of training calibers to implement joint training and training of trainers (TOT) programs, and allow SDA and ITI students to submit joint applied projects within the program tracks. This is in addition to exchanging work models, industrial and technical partnerships between the two entities.
Moreover, the MoU provides for cooperation between the Technology Industry and Digital Capacities Agency at the Saudi Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, and the Technology Innovation and Entrepreneurship Center (TIEC) of the Information Technology Industry Development Agency (ITIDA) at the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT).
Cooperation includes empowering entrepreneurs in emerging digital technologies, providing the necessary support to maximize economic benefits and activating the role of business accelerators, incubators and investors in digital technology areas to invest in technology facilities.
This is in addition to setting up a Saudi-Egyptian initiative for technological innovation and entrepreneurship to form joint teams from the two sides to develop solutions and products that serve major technology projects in the two countries, and arranging joint conferences and competitions in technological innovation and entrepreneurship, focusing on globally adopted key technologies.
Furthermore, cooperation includes exchanging expertise and best practices between the two countries in AI applications, digital awareness and digital transformation for building a digital community and government, based on innovation and effective digital capacities.
The two ministers, in addition, witnessed the signing of an MoU between Saudi Post and the Egyptian National Post Organization (ENPO). This reflects the two sides’ keenness on synergizing joint efforts to reach the best solutions for strengthening strategic relations and defining a general framework to leverage their services.
The three-year MoU was signed by Saudi Post President Anef Abanmi and ENPO Chairman Essam El-Saghir.
Cooperation areas include providing logistic services for pilgrims through receiving weights and shipments from them at places near Hajj and Umrah venues, and delivering them to their places of residence in Egypt. This is in addition to enabling e-payments between Saudi Post and Egypt Post, linking e-wallets of pilgrims, visitors and tourists of the two countries, and recharging EasyPay Wallet.
Moreover, the two sides agreed on developing a suitable work mechanism to deal with judicial correspondences between the two countries, and developing a twinning agreement to improve the international express mail service quality according to the twinning standards adopted by the Express Mail Service (EMS) Cooperative.
They also agreed to link the Consolidation Hub in Cairo Airport with its counterpart in Riyadh, creating a single consolidation hub in the region, and activate money transfer services between the two countries, especially as over million Egyptians live in Saudi Arabia.
The signing ceremony was attended by the ICT Minister’s Advisor for Artificial Intelligence (AI) Golestan Radwan and a number of MCIT officials.
