Page 44 - SAMENA Trends - November-December 2021

REGIONAL & MEMBERS UPDATES SAMENA TRENDS

REGIONAL NEWS

Egypt's ICT Sector Witnesses Significant Development During 2021

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 projects were recently implemented at subsidy system, in addition to 8 ongoing
trainees with a budget of LE 400 million a total cost of LE 3.5 billion, including projects worth LE 3.2 billion, most notably
in 2020, and a target of training 200,000 four projects implemented with a total the implementation and operation of the
trainees with a budget of LE 1.1 billion of LE 271.4 million. The most prominent second phase health insurance system,
during the fiscal year 2021-2022. With of these projects are the enforcement the mechanization of the agricultural
regard to the information infrastructure and law enforcement system and the holdings system (the farmer card), the
and digital transformation sector, 12 development of the commodity and bread launch of the digital Egypt platform for

44 NOV-DEC 2021