Utopia in a village

It's good for IT. But is it good for Egypt? Jasper Thornton checks out Egypt's new Smart Village
Imagine. Inside your office, the air tingles with the satisfying hum of computers working at capacity. Expensive air-conditioners chill the air and warm light pours in from vast windows so clean they squeak. The world outside is remote; hardly a sound disturbs your thoughts. No intrusive car-horns here.
Aided by dragnet-fast data, voice and video transmission, your creative team sits alert at their desks, dreaming up the future of cyberspace. Leaving them to their virtual-reality reverie, you head for the entrance, passing through a central atrium, filled with golden light. Stepping outside, the day is desert hot, but the sere is softened by trimmed green lushness, and moisture from lakes, waterfalls and splashing fountains rinses the air. All about stand curving buildings that are rhapsodies in glass, plastic and steel: twisting phantasmagoria, like things from outer space. Walking along a curving, flag- stoned expanse that skirts a sculpted lawn, you approach a lake. From its middle, a glass pyramid emerges sleekly from the ripples. You circle the lake, nodding at suited business people who stand chatting on paths or wandering in silent thought, until you reach a narrow causeway leading over the water to the pyramid that residents call the "think tank café." Even at leisure, the ideas must flow.
Sounds like something from Yevgeny Zamyatin's science fiction novel, We? In fact, it's an idea from the Ministry for Communication and Information Technology -- The Smart Village at the Pyramids -- and it will be ready in 2002.
"The village will be a centre of excellence, a technology park where we intend to build a top-notch infrastructure to facilitate business," Dr Ali El-Hefnawy, chairman of the "Smart Village Company, (20 per cent government owned, 80 per cent private owned)" told Al- Ahram Weekly. The Smart Village is one of several inducements the Ministry is developing to encourage IT companies that want to work in the Middle East to choose Egypt as their base. The village will offer a gorgeous environment, lightning-fast Internet connection, and a host of technology and administrative services, all designed to make the village an oasis of seamless IT business practice in a desert of commercial frustration.
"Technology people have specific needs," argues El-Hefnawy. "IT is not like working in a factory. You need to think, to generate ideas. Progress in high tech comes from sudden brain-waves. In the middle of the city there are all sorts of hassles. You can't find anywhere to park, you can't breathe through the pollution." No brain-waves there. "We aim to provide a healthy, calm environment in which people can work and, most important, create. People working and thinking in labs don't want some factory on their doorstep. They need green, and calm. If we build this environment, companies will invest."
El-Hefnawy's team has prepared an impressive list of services to attract companies. The land for the Smart Village is paid for by the ministry -- all 300 verdant acres. Executives will be able to slot their chauffeur- driven Toyotas neatly into one of over 14,000 parking spaces. At their computer terminals, the new economy "thinkers" will revel in super high-speed connection, guaranteed by backed-up power. Should research on-line fail, the on-site library is on-hand to help. When a presentation is ready, a business hotel, conference centre and press centre will let executives impress visiting VIPs with the latest IT ideas. And to keep stress at bay, a health centre, restaurants and the pyramid "think-tank café" await. For the executive in a rush, there's even a helipad to help race to the airport.
"Invisible" services are even more compelling. "The ministry guarantees to provide sufficient qualified personnel for companies setting up in the village," El-Hefnawy told the Weekly. "If there aren't people available, we will train them to international standards, at our expense, providing the company agrees to hire them afterwards." Firms in the Smart Village will also get a tax holiday for 10 years and a fast track through administrative hurdles. "They just plug in and we do the rest," said El-Hefnawy. The government also thinks Law 8 of 1997, which lets foreign companies own Egyptian assets, will give the Smart Village added cachet. And just to add to the convenience, the IT Ministry itself has put its mortar where its mouth is, and will relocate to the village to be near its customers.
Interested companies can rent office space in one of the existing buildings, or build their own office, as long as they stick to the daring tone of the architecture already there: central atria and all.
Not everyone is sold yet, though. El- Hefnawy told the Weekly that Compaq, Microsoft, Oracle, Cisco and Alcatel have already signed Memoranda of Understanding to buy plots at the Village. But Memoranda aren't guarantees. Akram Farag, of Digital Systems Middle East, an IT company, told the Weekly, "The village will encourage an influx of investment, if it's done properly. But there need to be things other than the village." He went on to argue, "an international businessman is not going to invest in a country where it takes three hours to get through the airport, and three to five weeks to get stuff through customs." Farag added, "it is possible for the infrastructure to be made right, but every government department must be involved. Talk is cheap. They need to get all the inputs right, before getting the desired output." Despite these misgivings, Farag's own company will buy a plot in the village.
But if enough firms follow Farag's lead, El-Hefnawy thinks the village will give plenty to Egypt. "The village will bring international companies here, who will employ Egyptians, passing on their expertise and providing jobs." But some feel that although the Smart Village is good for IT companies, it is of less use to Egypt as a whole. Yasmine Siddiqui, former chief editor of architecture magazine Medina, which ran the competition to get the best design for the Smart Village, worries that the ministry's great hope may end as little more than a subsidised sales-room. "Of course IT companies will flock there," she told the Weekly. "They get cheap office space. But look at the plans," she added. "There is no space for plant, or manufacture." Siddiqui thinks the ministry's plan to keep manufacturing far from the village is to its detriment. "For a country like Egypt, the money is in manufacturing chips and stuff like that: India and Silicon Valley are already dreaming up the software. But at the Smart Village there's no opportunity for production. It will probably just end up as a showroom for products manufactured elsewhere." In that case, the only winners in Egypt will be the construction firms. Siddiqui also thinks the village is an ecological disgrace. "Lawns in the desert?" she asks. "Are you kidding? Come on! You don't need lawns to help you think! It's a horrifying waste of water. And there is nothing progressive in the design at all. They're out in the sun and they don't even use solar cells."
The Smart Village must overcome other challenges, too. Last October, Dubai launched the $200 million Dubai Internet City, a tax-free zone that lets foreign companies own assets 100 per cent, speeds firms through administrative procedures, and aims to be a regional IT hub. Sound familiar?
The Weekly asked El-Hefnawy why a multinational that can afford one head office in the region should choose Cairo over Dubai. El- Hefnawy pointed out that the domestic market in Egypt is much more exciting than Dubai's. "Egypt is a virgin market," he remarked. "There are huge possibilities. Dubai is small and offers little to thrill." Dubai's smaller market means sales to local people are less likely to offset the set-up costs for arriving firms, he thinks.
Farag agrees. "Egypt has a lot of good cheap labour." On that score, Dubai cannot compete: its labour laws are notoriously creaky. And the government Internet portal in Dubai, Etisalat, is a monopoly, excruciatingly slow, and censored. Hardly conducive to high-tech, high-smart thinking. One thing the Dubai promoters have remorselessly touted is the standard of living in the city: "it's clean, safe and modern!" they say. But then again, Dubai's antiseptic living may not be to the taste of the restless adventurers of the new economy.
The Pyramids Smart Village is the first of three IT zones planned for Egypt. The ministry hopes the Smart Village will be the pilot to steer Egypt's new economy into the new century. Some have their doubts: they think firms will just use the cheap office space to set up showrooms, or wonder whether the frustrations most businesses in Egypt suffer will be fully alleviated by the village. Environmentalists have their doubts, too. The ministry on the other hand hopes the village will be a paradise for IT, not some dystopian misfire. Sitting in his office at the ministry, Ali El-Hefnawy is pretty sure which it will be. With a look of tungsten intent, he declares to the Weekly, "This will be the IT hub for the region."
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