At a regional conference last week, the Egyptian government showcased its new commitments to IT. Pierre Loza reports Last week, Egypt's International Economic Forum (EIEF) organised its fourth annual conference on Information Technology and Telecommunications in the Arab world. This year's round, entitled; "A Path for a New Arab Revival" brought together a number of industry players and high-level government officials from around the region. The three-day event commenced with an opening statement by EIEF Chairman Shafik Gabr. Gabr challenged the audience to address the Arab world's economic needs. He highlighted "low productivity, weak investment levels, and slow economic growth as contributive factors to the ticking time bomb of unemployment." With statistics showing an average unemployment rate of 15 per cent in the Arab world, Gabr said that "70 million jobs needed to be created by 2017, with an employment growth rate of 4 per cent, something that has never been achieved anywhere in the world for the whole of the 20th century". But even with such a gloomy forecast, Gabr argued that if certain guidelines were met, the Arab world would witness drastic improvements in its economic performance. He said this developmental jump could be made through increased Arab technological awareness, the export of a young talented and dynamic work force, the presence of a realistic implementation strategy, and greater access to foreign markets and technical know how. Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif also affirmed IT's importance as an impetus for economic growth, with "1100 new companies, LE10 billion of private sector investments and 30,000 new jobs [having been created] in the last five years." Nazif went on to outline the major role that CIT can play in providing "faster, less complicated services to citizens and to the business sector". With opportunities available in everything from education to the banking sector, Nazif made a clear invitation to foreign direct investors. "The deal to investors is quite clear -- we will train any number of employees to the investor's specifications at government expense," he said. Nazif also announced that Egypt is planning to host a regional conference in April 2005, to coordinate the Arab-African stance prior to the second phase of the World Summit on the Information Society, to be held in Tunisia. Last week's Cairo IT conference also included a series of symposiums discussing the prospects of CIT in the Arab world. The symposium -- entitled "IT and the New Arab Revival: An Arab Breakthrough" -- tackled a wide range of issues that even included the empowerment of women. The only female on the panel, Sheikha Lubna Al-Qasimi sees the Internet as the great "gender equaliser... I do believe the Internet has given much more opportunities for women actually to do business commercially," she said. Patrick Smedt of Microsoft also emphasised the importance of women in Microsoft's business strategy. The company is currently participating in a programme that targets women, and helps push them into the work force. The necessity of "technical know-how" was another focal point of the discussion, clearly articulated by Intelsat CEO Conny Kulman. "In the Kingdom of Saudia Arabia, there is as modern a communications infrastructure as anywhere in Western Europe, but the businesses don't know how to use that infrastructure to their advantage," he said. The "brain drain" question was also addressed with some optimism by Al-Qasimi, who believes that like India, Egypt can export IT professionals, while also fostering a vibrant IT industry at home. Finance Minister Youssef Boutros Ghali spoke on "The Outlook of the Region: Investment in CIT as a Catalyst for Change", commending the Nazif government's strong commitment to upgrading the customs' bureaucracy, through investments in efficiency enhancing schemes. "They have provided me, in under two weeks, with 600 computers, that have been distributed to 24 customs outlets, and about five servers with capacities that are unheard of," he said. Ghali remained cautious, however, about the speed of administrative improvements, because of the more time consuming task of training customs officials on the new machines. The finance minister also noted a change in government strategy; instead of patching up bits and pieces of existing infrastructure, he said, new infrastructure is being built from the "ground up completely". In general, with a 650 per cent increase in Internet usage over the last three years, there is plenty of room for greater investments, something much more likely to occur within a simpler, more efficient bureaucratic apparatus. Fred Sicre of the World Economic Forum acknowledged these encouraging numbers, yet warned of the high cost of access to the Internet in the Arab world. For the right levels of growth to take place, Sicre believes that, "bringing down the price of access to the Internet is absolutely essential."\
