Egypt reaches a new era of data centers industry

CAIRO – 22 June 2019: Ministry of Communication and Information Technology launched Data Centers Future Conference in light of Egypt’s keenness to chair a distinctive position in database industry especially amid all its privileges.

“Egypt exchanges up to 80 percent of data from Asia, Europe and vice versa where it host overseas and land cables,” the Egyptian ministry stated.

The ministry further affirmed Egypt’s seeking to have mutual ties with African countries launching distinctive cooperation that aims to improve internet services and transfer data.

MCIT proposed cooperation plan to achieve integration in this industry with Arab and African countries amid Egypt’s need to expand in this area.

This came to light in the opening ceremony of the third conference of Future of Data Centers with the participation of conference’s president Amr Farouk, ICT’s leaders and CEO of ITIDA as well as some officials of MCIT.

Conference to be ended on Tuesday and to include a set of plenary sessions tackling key topics and issues related to the future of data centers industry being a cornerstone of digitalization; in the presence of a number of experts and officials of local and international companies in the ICT sector.

On the sidelines of the conference, an exhibition will be held with the participation of 30 of ICT firms.

The ministry said in its speech that Egypt, with its skills and human expertise, attracts large international companies producing large number of data that serves the whole continent.

“Egypt works on duplicating number of qualified students in this field through launching a set of initiatives, training projects and courses,” MCIT further elaborated.

The ministry stressed the importance of the data center industry, which is witnessing steady growth. The growth rate of the industry is expected to exceed 12percent annually until 2022.

The global market is worth about $230 billion, which is a challenge in the Middle East and North Africa region, where data center industry is worth no more than $ 5 billion, indicating that the region has not received its fair share of the industry yet.

The ministry revealed the completion of the national strategy of Artificial Intelligence. Egypt, through AI, can provide added value to the data centers it hosts on its territory, adding that a plan was set to build skills and establish a number of specialized colleges in AI and data science, in coordination with the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research.

The ministry stressed that these efforts are accompanied by legislative and structural reform through the pursuit of the issuance of the Personal Data Protection Act, which is a basic building block in the data center industry.

A community dialogue was held to include companies working in the field of information technology and listen to their proposals to develop the cyber security.