The Minister of Communications and Information Technology Amr Talaat has witnessed the closing ceremony of the first academic year of Wazeefa Tech initiative, and has met with a number of trainees of the Freelancing and Remote Work initiative. This comes in the keenness of the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT) to follow up on the progress made in the two initiatives, and explore closely their achievements, points of strength and weakness and the challenges they have faced since their launch.
The meeting was attended by the Chairwoman of the Information Technology Institute (ITI) Heba Saleh, the Director of the National Telecommunication Institute (NTI) Iman Ashour, a number of MCIT officials and partners of the ICT sector from the private sector. This is in addition to a group of young people, beneficiaries of the Freelancing and Remote Work initiative, as well as graduates of Wazeefa Tech, from different governorates, who work in advanced technology areas as Oracle Cloud Financial Functional Consultants, Oracle Developers, Cloud Supply Chain Managers, Functional Consultants and Embedded Systems Engineers.
During the meeting, the ICT Minister had an open discussion with the young people, answering their inquiries and listening to their views on a number of training-related topics.
In his talk, Talaat stated that MCIT aims to enhance Egypt's position on the ICT industry map, at regional and international levels. This requires creating a base of young skilled cadres, capable of exporting digital services and implementing Digital Egypt projects that target improving government services, rationalizing expenditure, achieving governance and fighting corruption. He added that developing trained cadres in ICT areas and creating job opportunities for young people, represent the main objective of each initiative launched by MCIT or its affiliated organizations.
MCIT is keen to communicate with the trainees of its specialized training initiatives, who work as freelancers, said the ICT Minister. He added that job opportunities in Egypt are restricted by the available projects and the regional economy of each governorate. This is where the significance of freelancing platforms is demonstrated, as they provide jobs for more youth, beyond the geographical boundaries, enabling work from home, he said.
The Minister called on the attending young people to work on gaining experience and developing their capabilities to boost their competitiveness in the global labor market. He also advised them to learn about MCIT various training initiatives in different technological specialties and at various levels, from digital training and blended model, to the traditional training approach.
Moreover, Talaat highlighted that the Digital Egypt innovation hubs, established in universities in a number of governorates, are soon to be opened, with the aim of providing training opportunities for youth and nurturing innovation.
During the meeting, the ICT Minister explored the training pillars adopted in the Freelancing and Remote Work initiative, and the success it achieved during the past period. The training pillar includes various training material from MCIT affiliated educational platforms, as well as other global platforms, focusing on freelancing skills and how to join online freelancing platforms.
Over 45,000 people registered at Mahara-Tech platform to study such material, with 1,000 of them benefiting from the sign language interpreting service. Training also includes the most in-demand technological skills in this type of business, identified through the quarterly reports of those platforms.
The mentoring pillar, however, involves the participation of freelancing experts who provide the initiative participants with effective instructions to seize the available opportunities in the labor market, through delivering public lectures that present ideas that suit a large numbers of attendees. This is in addition to holding specialized meetings to address specific issues and challenges and answer the participants’ questions.
There are more than 120 professionals on the Freelancing and Remote Work initiative platform. In addition, the platform includes registration pages for more than 20 seminars and meetings between freelancing experts and interested participants from different governorates.
Through the partnerships pillar, remote recruitment companies and freelancing platforms offer the available job opportunities through the initiative, while participating platforms provide subscribers through the initiative with special privileges to encourage them to start their career in the field.
The meeting presented a number of success stories of young people determined to become professionals in various ICT fields, who became experts, supporting newcomers at the initiative.
Freelancing has become one of the criteria for successfully completing the training programs, implementing them, and measuring their impact and the return on their investments. Other criteria include completing the course, obtaining its certificate, finding a job opportunity through it, and helping trainees earn money.
