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The World Bank named Egypt 2008's top economic reformer in the Middle East for the third year in a row.
    • In its Doing Business 2009 report, the World Bank named Egypt the top reformer in the Middle East and one of the 10 top global reformers.
    • Egypt was noted for its reforms in the business start-up arena, which include streamlining the construction permit and property registration processes, protecting investors and accessing credit.
    • 2008 was the third year in a row that Egypt was named the top reformer in the Middle East.

      Source      : World Bank Doing Business 2009.

 

Cairo is home to Africa's only subway
    • The first trains started running nearly 20 years ago, and the system has been gradually expanded. Today, the two subway lines carry 2.5 to three million people every day.
    • The system now has 53 stations and over 65 kilometers of track.

      • Source: Voice of America News.

 

Al-Azhar University in Cairo is the second oldest degree-granting university in the world
    • On June 4, 2009, al-Azhar co-hosted U.S. President Barak Obama's visit to Cairo and his speech to the Muslim world.
    • Though historically a theological seminary for Islamic thought, medicine and engineering schools were established at al-Azhar in 1961.
    • In 2007, the Imam of al-Azhar declared terrorists and suicide bombers to be "heretics" and accused them of deviating from the true path of Islam.
    • Studies began at Al-Azhar in the month of Ramadan, 975 AD.

      • Source: Al-Azhar University Information

 

Egypt plans to derive 20 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2020
    • More than half of Egypt's projected renewable energy supply in 2020 would come from wind energy, with significant investments in solar and hydroelectric power.
    • A new $30 million center of renewable energy has opened in Nasser City, providing expertise to businesses and governments throughout the Middle East and North Africa.

      • Source: Oxford Business Group Report 2009

 

In 2002, Egypt unveiled the New Bibliotheca Alexandrina near the spot where Alexandria's ancient library stood
    • Located on the site of the historic eastern harbor of Alexandria, almost exactly where the old library and the royal palace of the Ptolemies once stood, the complex comprises three main elements: the pre-existing conference center, the planetarium and the new building.
    • The New Bibliotheca Alexandrina is dedicated to recapture the spirit of openness and scholarship of the original Bibliotheca Alexandrina.
    • The New Bibliotheca Alexandrina and the Library of Congress worked together to develop a world digital library.

      • Source: www.bibalex.org

 

Egypt has produced four Nobel laureates, awarded prizes for peace, chemistry and literature
    • Former Egyptian President Anwar Sadat was the country's first Nobel laureate, after being awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace for his landmark peace agreement between Egypt and Israel at Camp David in 1978.
    • Egyptian novelist Naguib Mahfouz became the only Arabic-language writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1988.
    • CalTech Professor Ahmed H. Zewail, won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1999 for how atoms in a molecule move during a chemical reaction.
    • Mohamed El-Baradei, Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005 for his efforts to promote, safe, peaceful use of nuclear energy.

      • Source: The Nobel Foundation

 

Over 500 free press newspapers, journals and magazines are available in Egypt
    • Egypt is a major regional media player and its press is one of the most influential and widely-read in the region." - BBC World Reports
    • Over half of Egypt's newspapers are privately owned, including 17 newspapers published by churches and Christian groups.
    • Opposition parties may form their own newspapers, and in recent years the Shura Council has granted licenses to the Ghad and Karama parties to publish weekly newspapers.

      • Source: Freedom House country reports

 

Egypt is home to 30 percent of the Arab world's bloggers.
    • Egypt has an estimated 162,000 bloggers, most of whom are between the ages of 20 and 30.
    • Egypt’s Ministry of Communications and Information Technology launched the Free Internet Initiative in 2002 offering free internet services to all users across the country.
    • Thanks in large part to government efforts to promote internet use, the number of Egyptians with access to the internet has more than quadrupled over the past several years, and an estimated 10 percent of the population used the internet in 2007. 

      Source: Blog Herald; Freedom House country reports; UNHCR

 

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak is serving a two year term as co-president of the Union for the Mediterranean.
    • The Union for the Mediterranean began in 2008 as a way for EU members and their non-EU neighbors across the Mediterranean Sea to work together. Its main objectives are to promote peace, fight pollution in the Mediterranean, increase solar energy use, build land and sea highways and cooperate on higher education and research. 
    • The Union joins EU members with several non-EU countries that border the Mediterranean Sea. The headquarters of the Union for the Mediterranean are located in Barcelona, Spain.

      Source: European Commission

 

Egypt and Google are working together to increase the amount of Arabic content online.
    • The three year, $10 million agreement seeks to promote Egyptian industries worldwide via Google's advertising platforms on the web.
    • When signing the agreement with Google in June 2009, Egyptian Minister of Communications and Information Technology Tarek Kamel said, “the barrier now with computers and PCs is the lack of Arabic content online on the net, and this is one of the areas we need to invest in the future, and we are inviting investors to come in and make our national heritage and cultural heritage online and make it available not only to the neighboring countries in the Arab world, but to the 350 million members of the Arabic-speaking population worldwide, whether in the U.S. or in Europe.”
    • In November 2009, Egypt will host the international Internet Governance Forum (IGF), an international forum for multi-stakeholder policy dialogue concerning the development of the internet.

      • Source: Internet Governance Forum; The Washington Times

 

Egypt is the center of movie and television production in the Arab world.
    • Of the more than 4,000 short and feature-length films made in Arabic speaking countries since 1908, more than three-quarters were Egyptian. The number of feature-length films produced in Egypt more than doubled from 1997 to 2007.
    • The Cairo International Film Festival was established in 1976 and has become one of the top festivals worldwide. It includes films from more than 50 countries in Africa, the Arab world and other parts of the world.
    • In 2008, the Cairo International Film Festival celebrated the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights with a section devoted to films about human rights.

      Source: Cairo Film Fest; Al-Ahram Weekly

 

Egypt boasts a highly skilled workforce, with 265,000 university graduates each year
    • There were 176,400 employees in the Information and Communication Technology sector in Q1 2009, representing a year-over-year increase of more than 12,700 employees and an annual growth rate of almost 8 percent.
    • Of the 16,000 students who graduate from Egyptian technical universities every year, more than a third speak two or three languages.
    • In 2006, the Egyptian Education Initiative (EEI) was launched as a public-private partnership between the Egyptian government and the World Economic Forum in order to utilize IT as a driver for economic and innovative development in education. Since its launch, 70,000 PCs have been deployed and more than 200,000 training sessions have been delivered through the EEI.

      Source: Ministry of Communications and Information Technology; Egyptian Education Initiative

 

More than 30 of Africa’s Top 200 companies are based in Egypt
    • According to African Business magazine, 33 of Africa’s top 200 companies are located in Egypt.
    • Six Egyptian companies on the African Business list rank within the top 50 on the continent.
    • The highest ranking Egyptian companies are in the telecommunications sector. 

      Source: African Business

Egypt has a structurally low cost of operations.

  • The cost of talent in the IT sector in Egypt is competitive to all locations, including Asian low-cost locations such as  India and the Philippines.
  • IT programmer costs are 20-50% less than other emerging locations in North Africa and Central/Eastern Europe.

Source: Watson Wyatt.
One of the main benefits is its low average wage costs (2,076 USD per annum) when compared with Eastern European countries; only India (1,416 USD) and the Philippines (1,776 USD) have lower average wages (source: EIU 2007). For IT programmers, very cost-competitive salaries are rewarded, for example, Egyptians received an average of 9,126 USD in 2006, while 20,966 USD was the service norm in Morocco (A. T. Kearney 2007 Global Service Location Attractiveness).
The costs of doing business in Egypt are significantly lower than in Eastern Europe and even lower than other emerging markets. This is partly owing to the fact that the Egyptian Pound (EGP) is relatively stable against the US Dollar, preserving cost competitiveness and encouraging foreign investment. Inexpensive office rentals compared with other countries allow an Egyptian based outsourcing company offering technology services to rent spaces at 180 USD per square meter, while India would charge about 220 USD, with Philippines at 184 USD and Bulgaria at 239 USD (CB Richard Ellis). In addition, globally low telecom costs with ready access to VoIP at decreased global internet rates contribute to foreign investors’ return on investments.
Egypt is already home to several contact centers for multinational companies, including Microsoft, Teleperformance, Google, Vodafone, Xceed, ECCO and E Group. Call centers in Egypt rely on the country’s well educated and ambitious workforce - where the local, neutral accent is particularly attractive to global organizations - and there is a high ceiling for trainees to expand within a burgeoning technology consulting and outsourcing sector.

 

 

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