CNBC Business | JEWELS OF THE NILE

CNBC Business | JEWELS OF THE NILE

urveying the modern architecture, the baby palms, the artificial lake and the full-size football pitch, it is easy to forget that this is the heart of one of our most ancient civilisations. But a few miles from the pyramids at Giza, Cairo’s Smart Village is a monument to a far more recent Egyptian accomplishment – a gleaming 265ha technology park, emblazoned with the logos of Microsoft, HP, Ericsson and Intel.

This high-tech cluster was the product of the vision of Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif – a former minister of communications and IT – who, five years ago, pledged to propel Egypt’s IT industry into one of its leading sectors. In 2005, Nazif created the IT Industry Development Agency (ITIDA), a public-private partnership responsible for attracting foreign investment into Egypt and for increasing the international competitiveness of local IT enterprises. Egypt’s telecoms firms – Telecom Egypt, Vodafone, Etisalat and Mobinil – are obliged to pay 1% of their revenues to the initiative. Funding is channelled into a multitude of programmes designed to improve the appeal of Egypt to foreign investors in outsourcing – from developing the infrastructure to partnering with businesses and universities to increase the output of industry-ready, multilingual graduates.

According to ITIDA, of the 330,000 people who graduate from Egyptian universities every year, up to 90,000 are suited to work in IT outsourcing (ITO) and business process outsourcing (BPO) operations such as call centres. ITIDA estimates that around 30,000 are fluent in western European languages – though English-speakers make up the bulk of that number, a skew that experts warn ITIDA must address quickly.