Strategic ICT Partner
Technology Partners
Powe rin g I T a h e a d
60 Mins Show dates: 14-18 October 2012, Dubai World Trade Centre
| AT GITEX TECHNOLOGY WEEK | Exhibition hours: 11am -7pm
Egypt aims high
Yasser El kady, CEO, ITIDA Egypt has shot up the list of countries for global IT outsourcing in the last few years and comes to GITEX 2012 armed with the largest number of home companies the event has ever seen. ITIDA (Information and Communication Technology Outsourcing) is the executive IT arm of Egypt’s Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT) and exhibits at GITEX for the fifth year. However, the appearance of Egypt’s Minister of Communications and Information Technology himself this week is a strong indication of how
FOLLOW US
@computernewsme
significant the country’s role in the global IT industry has become. “We came here with 86 companies accompanying us from Egypt, which is the biggest number ever. We are sponsoring and supporting those companies, both inside and outside of our stand here at GITEX,” said Yasser El kady, CEO, ITIDA. “We are also focusing on pushing Egypt as a destination for off shoring and outsourcing for software applications, IT services and other business processes,” he added. Going back four years, Egypt was nowhere near the map of global IT
outsourcing. However, the country is now listed as number four on the list of countries when it comes to business process outsourcing and, extraordinarily, number two when it comes to IT outsourcing, only behind India. El kady said companies are keen to outsource IT to Egypt because of its young talent. “If you look at the talent pool in Egypt, there are two million university students and around 400,000 are graduating each year. We are investing big into capacity building and into the development of this talent pool inside the universities and once they’ve graduated. We’re preparing them for jobs, especially when it comes to IT and software applications. By developing young talent into these jobs, the cost of outsourcing to Egypt is more competitive than the rest of the world,” he said. When it comes to software and software applications, Saudi Arabia is number one in terms of the volume of ITIDA’s customers in the Gulf States, followed by Qatar and the UAE. However, when it comes to the whole of the MEA region, ITIDA has seen a large response from North Africa and Libya, and for business processes, many of its outsourcing 4 CONTINUED ON PAGE 3
PICTURE OF THE HOUR