The Mobile World Congress (MWC) is often about OEMs launching their next flagship device for the year, and the MWC 2018 was no different. Well, not for Egypt, which though had no OEMs launching their product at the global stage of technology, the country’s presence was felt at the event.
All thanks to the country’s Minister of Communications and Information Technology, Yasser Elkady, who held a series of meetings with corporates and global bodies in attendance at the MWC18 event in Barcelona.
Elkady was busy lobbying for support for Egypt’s ICT sector. He has been at the helm of the ministry for a little over two years now. At the MWC18, he attended a series of ministerial sessions on ‘Connecting the world towards a comprehensive, secure, and stable digital future.
During those ministerial sessions, Elkady was on a charm offensive and generously sharing some of the recent achievements Egypt has accomplished:
“The most important developments in Egypt for the ICT field in recent years include that Egypt ranked 14th in the Global Cybersecurity Index (GCI), and the Egyptian technology services export increased from 1.79 billion dollars to 3.26 billion dollars in 2017. In addition, Gartner listed Egypt as a key destination for the export of technology services, and Forbes magazine report stated that Cairo is one of the best cities to host startups.”
The Minister was there to make sure global stage players in electronic manufacturing, modern technological application such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Internet of Things (IoT) know Egypt is open for business.
The Minister has a special meeting with ICANN Chairman and CEO, Goran Marby at the MWC 2018. During which Elkady shared results of current cooperation between Egypt’s National Telecom Regulatory Authority (NTRA) and ICANN.
The two corporations partnered to set up a DNS Entrepreneurship Center back in 2015 to develop the domain name industry in both Africa and the Middle East. They are also jointly working to improve the domain name industry infrastructure in Egypt.
The Minister further held meetings with Secretary-General of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), Mr. Houlin Zhao, CEO of Huawei in North Africa Liu Wenjun, and the CEO of Qualcomm in MENA Jay Sirang.