The Egyptian ICT sector witnessed significant developments during 2021. These developments are linked to the remarkably high growth rates of the Egyptian economy and the increase in the number of users, which supports the government's digital transformation strategy.
The Egyptian ICT sector is described, according to international assessment institutions, as one of the fastest growing economic sectors thanks to strategic plans that are in line with market and life developments, despite the coronavirus pandemic.
According to the data of the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, the sector has achieved tangible leaps in all governorates of Egypt by building a broad base of technical cadres and supporting major national projects.
The indicators of the communications and information technology sector rose, as it is the highest growth among the state sectors, with a growth rate of about 16% in the fiscal year 2020-2021.
The sector’s contribution to the GDP increased from 3.2 percent in 2017-2018 to 5% in the 2020/21 fiscal year.
Digital exports grew from $3.6 billion in 2018-2019 to $4.5 billion in 2020-2021, in addition to the growth in the number of workers in the sector from 233,000 in 2017-2018 to 281,000 in 2019-2020.
Several projects were implemented in cooperation with state agencies and institutions to achieve digital transformation in all sectors, and to implement the project of moving the government to the new administrative capital as a participatory, paperless government.
This is in addition to the increase in the number of trainees in the specialized training programs provided by the ministry and its affiliated training bodies from 4,000 trainees with a budget of LE 50 million in 2018, to 148,000 trainees with a budget of LE 400 million in 2020, and a target of training 200,000 trainees with a budget of LE 1.1 billion during the fiscal year 2021-2022.
With regard to the information infrastructure and digital transformation sector, 12 projects were recently implemented at a total cost of LE 3.5 billion, including four projects implemented with a total of LE 271.4 million.
The most prominent of these projects are the enforcement and law enforcement system and the development of the commodity and bread subsidy system, in addition to 8 ongoing projects worth LE 3.2 billion, most notably the implementation and operation of the second phase health insurance system, the mechanization of the agricultural holdings system (the farmer card), the launch of the digital Egypt platform for government services, the mechanization of documentation services.
As for technological and cognitive headquarters, they It include five projects that have been and are being implemented at a total cost of LE 3.5 billion, including five projects that have been implemented at a total cost of LE 1.5 billion, most notably the technological areas in New Assiut / Borg El Arab / New Beni Swi / Sadat, and the establishment of seven new creativity complexes "Egypt Digital Creativity Centers".
Egypt witnessed a growth in the entrepreneurship sector and emerging companies in light of the efforts made to support technological innovation, the most prominent of which is the implementation of a project to spread Egypt’s digital innovation centers in the governorates. The first phase of the project included the completion of the establishment of seven centers, while the second phase aims to establish nine other centers, at a total cost of LE 1.5 billion for the two phases.
Egypt ranked first in the Middle East and North Africa in the number of investment deals for emerging companies.
Egypt has maintained its regional leadership in the Middle East and Africa in the provision of cross-border outsourcing services and ranked first regionally and continentally and fifteenth globally in providing outsourcing services, according to Kearney’s index of “global service sites” for 2021.
Egypt's ranking advanced in the network readiness index, rising from 92nd place globally to 84th, and Egypt came among the 10 largest developing countries for digital inclusion.
Egypt's ranking also advanced in the "Government Readiness for Artificial Intelligence" index to become 56th globally compared to 111th in 2019.
According to the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, huge investments were made to raise the efficiency of the internet, which resulted in an increase in the average fixed internet speed from 6.5 Mbit/s in January 2019 to 45.8 Mbit/s in October 2021, making Egypt fourth in Africa compared to 40th in January 2019.
As part of the work to improve the quality of telecommunications services, 80 MHz was launched in the frequency space of 2600 MHz, with revenues of $1.170 billion, and the number of installed towers was doubled from 600 to 1200 in the first half of 2021, while working in parallel on the governance of telecommunications services.
The investments of the Egyptian Postal development plan during the current year amounted to about 4 billion pounds, and the total number of post offices reached about 4,147 post offices, and the number is targeted to reach 4,200 by the end of the year 2021.
The number of developed offices reached about 2,855 post offices, while it is aimed that the total developed offices by the end of 2021 will reach about 3,130 post offices; New postal outlets were also created through the establishment of 147 post offices out of a target of 200 offices by the end of 2021.
The total number of postal kiosks reached about 35 postal kiosks out of a target of 50 postal kiosks by the end of 2021, in addition to the number of mobile offices reaching about 83 cars equipped and equipped with postal employees and an automatic teller machine out of a target of 89 mobile offices by the end of 2021, and the total number of ATMs 750 machines out of a target of 1750 machines by the end of 2021.