Made in Egypt satellite EGYPT will launch its first home-made satellite for scientific research in July 2018. While 70 per cent of the components of the new satellite are manufactured locally, both China and Japan are helping in the production with their know-how. Speaking in parliament last week, Egypt's Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research Khaled Abdel-Ghaffar showed MPs a photo and a model of the satellite. Moreover, Abdel-Ghaffar told the MPs that an Egyptian space agency will be created to oversee the manufacturing of the satellite components. The agency will be located in Egypt's space and satellite city on the CairoSuez Road. Abdel-Ghaffar expected the city to contribute at least 10 per cent to the national income within seven years. Last week parliament passed a 16-article law on establishing a space agency. Tightening up exports inspection THE AGRICULTURE Ministry announced this week a set of new regulations tightening inspection procedures for guava and pomegranate exports. The decision came after Saudi Arabia banned imports of guava over concerns of the level of pesticides it carries. According to the Saudi Press Agency, the ban was issued after tests proved that shipments of Egyptian guavas contained “pesticide residues at a rate higher than the internationally recognised permitted limit”. The new regulations named the Central Quarantine Administration in Cairo and South Valley as the only party responsible for inspecting and issuing approval for the exports of both crops. Banning Egyptian agricultural exports because of the high pesticide residuals from Gulf countries has become recurrent. In December Saudi Arabia banned Egyptian peppers; the UAE and Kuwait followed suit. Riyadh also prevented Egyptian strawberries in July. In June the Agriculture Ministry said it will adopt internationally recognised farming production standards on its upcoming strawberry, pepper and grape harvests to avoid such bans. Training financial journalists Al-AHRAM Canadian University (ACU) and Citigroup have set up the first financial journalist training workshop to be held in Egypt to provide junior journalists with hands-on experience and valuable methods for financial reporting. The one-day workshop involves six sessions that cover topics discussed by a Citi Egypt team, ACU professors and business journalists. Topics covered during the training include financial reporting and its ethics, an overview of the financial media landscape in Egypt and the challenges facing financial journalists, understanding and analysing economic reports and indicators, and types of news sources and how to use them. “This workshop aims to provide participants with first-hand experience in the fundamentals of financial reporting from both banking and educational perspectives,” said Nader Sheikh, Citi Egypt country officer. “We are proud to partner with ACU, one of the biggest names in education and media.” Sheikh also explained that “journalists today are responsible for shaping the public's interest in making informed decisions. We always rely on the press to provide accurate, time sensitive information which will help strengthen the financial system in the country.” “Gaining practical experience in the Egyptian financial media landscape provided by ACU and Citibank is unprecedented,” Inas Abu Youssef, dean of ACU's Faculty of Mass Communication, stated. “The one-day workshop provided journalists with the tools to master financial language in order to both simplify it for normal readers and cover it analytically for finance professionals and investors,” she said. Facilitators of the workshop included Abu Youssef, Mohamed Abdel-Kader, country treasurer and markets head at Citi Egypt, Nadia Al-Goweili, deputy editor of Reuters Arabic Service, Khalifa Adham, editor-in-chief of Al-Ahram Al-Eqtesady and Omaima Kamal, deputy editor at Al-Akhbar newspaper. Al-Goweili said it was crucial to continuously sharpen journalists' tools of trade and provide them with guidance on how to steer the often-complex relationship with sources and tackle ethical dilemmas. “Empowering journalists to take ethical decisions is all the more important in today's rather challenging media landscape,” she stated. Adham discussed how the media landscape changed over the years with emphasis on digital media and how technology is shaping the public interest in making informed decisions. The importance of financial statistics and how readers interpret them was highlighted by Kamal who stressed that quality reporting and commentary impact the pocketbooks of everyone, from governments to individuals. The Citi Financial Journalist Training was held this year in Nigeria, Zambia, Pakistan, Kenya, Cameroun, Pakistan, Algeria and Morocco. Citi, a leading global bank, has 200 million customer accounts and does business in more than 160 countries and jurisdictions.
