Amin Khaireldin: 'Egypt's Language Skills Make It an Attractive Option' - Arabic Knowledge@Wharton

Amin Khaireldin: 'Egypt's Language Skills Make It an Attractive Option' - Arabic Knowledge@Wharton

By targeting the Middle Eastern and African markets, Egypt has grown into a destination for the region's information technology industry. In five years, Egyptian IT exports have increased 300%, reaching $1 billion. But Egypt's ambitions are aimed at claiming a greater portion of Western markets as well. The country touts its telecom infrastructure, its close location to Europe, and a worker pool that is multilingual and affordable -- advantages that are also cited by Amin Khaireldin, an evangelist for Egyptian IT. Officially, he is strategy advisor and member of the board of directors of the Information Technology Industry Development Agency (ITIDA) of Egypt. For the first 30 years of his career, Khaireldin worked for IBM Egypt before moving to Europe to manage IBM operations and strategy for the Middle East and Africa regions. In 2000, Khaireldin returned to Egypt, and led a national effort targeting ICT (information and communication technologies) export growth, resulting in the formation of the IT industry national development strategy. He remains in charge of executing the strategy. In an email exchange with Arabic Knowledge@Wharton, Khaireldin spoke on a variety of issues.