Waiting for the revolution

The Arab world's IT elite rub shoulders with international industry insiders. Tarek Atia watches as the region's IT quilt is woven
When you bring together a thousand IT enthusiasts from 33 countries for a two-day shop-talk fest -- mainly with the goal of giving your own emerging industry a learning boost -- information overload is bound to set in. Ideas are firing in every direction, agreements are floating in the air and every man is looking out for his own interests, be they national or entrepreneurial. So it was from 18-19 March, when Cairo hosted the conference "Information Technology and Telecommunications in the Arab World".
Organised by Egypt's International Economic Forum and sponsored by Egypt Telecom and a host of other companies, the conference featured an array of workshops on subjects as diverse as Internet Radio, e-learning, on-line trading and modern trends towards creating virtual versions of cultural works. Specialists dissected the convergence of telecom and IT industries in highly technical sessions debating such topics as the advantages of a high-speed DSL connection. Meanwhile, workshops promoted the government's new incubator initiative to nurture IT start-ups -- a joint venture with the brokerage and investment house Commercial International Investment Company (CIIC).
At times it seemed the focus of the endeavour was too broad for anyone to really benefit, but judging from the professional response, the conference was just the kind of place regional IT entrepreneurs thrive. Ehsaan Refaat Salem, marketing channels supervisor at the software development firm Personal Computer Systems, praised the event saying that 70 per cent of the forums, workshops, and working lunches he attended were relevant to his work at the 82-person company. Salem said that with his company seeking to export its services to the Arab world, the contacts and information he gathered this week were more useful than his experience at trade shows like GITEX and COMDEX, mainly because of the workshops, the involvement of government and the overall framework of serious inter-Arab cooperation.
Themed "Accessing New Horizons", the central issue of the conference was a challenge: as Arabs braving the all-encompassing future of IT, are we going to be reactive or proactive? The inescapable answer was that a successful future lies in cooperation. The organisers pledged to establish an Arab IT forum that would consist of government officials and private sector leaders and coordinate IT policy between Arab states. An Arab IT fund was also suggested for investments in the industry. The fund would be paid for by a 0.25 per cent allotment from each country's GDP. Both projects will be presented at the Arab Summit in Amman on 27-28 March.
Calling IT initiatives one of the driving forces of inter-Arab cooperation, Foreign Minister Amr Moussa said Egypt has proposed establishing a council of Arab information and telecommunication ministers. In his remarks at an opening-night dinner, Moussa -- soon to be the secretary-general of the Arab League -- touched on the fears and risks of going too far too fast. "There are those who fear that conceding to the global tide will make us vulnerable, and that we may eventually be overwhelmed by foreign cultures and norms, thus gradually eroding our identity," he said. "These fears are justified and need to be addressed. But, on the other hand, there are those who warn of the risk of being marginalised and losing our competitiveness if we do not join the global drive in this sector. These warnings are also serious and should be heeded."
Moussa's lucid, straightforward speech was a succinct summary of the Arab world's situation vis-à-vis IT and the Internet. And despite the ongoing global dot-com bust, there was a distinct air of optimism at the conference. "Don't be discouraged by the meltdown in dot-coms," John Sculley, former CEO of Apple Computer, told conference participants. "It means nothing in a five- or 10-year time span." Sculley, a renowned marketing wizard, engineered the growth of Apple from a hundred-million-dollar firm to one that made billions.
Later, however, Sculley's upbeat outlook was considerably dampened by the remarks of maverick multimedia journalist Emad Eddin Adeeb, who seemed profoundly distressed by the dot-com bomb. Seeming to burst the conference's bubble of positive energy, Adeeb's forecast was almost punishing. "I'm going to be short, depressing and to the point," he said. As owner of Web portal Good News For Me, Adeeb said he was in the game for good. He'd put too much of his effort, money and reputation at stake. But he then turned around and taunted the audience, daring to ask the painful question "How big is your market?" -- the implication being that no matter how enthusiastic that market is, it is still tiny. Adeeb, who is also a well-known talk show host on Orbit TV and editor of the newspaper Alam Al-Youm, suggested that the only survivors in this industry would be those who formed alliances, and those who chose to be "coffee boys in a successful company, rather than the chairman of a failed one." In fact, it was the "alliance or death" principle that Adeeb underscored, adding that the Arab world has never been keen on alliances.
But maybe there is room for everyone. Khaldoun Tabaza the founder of Arabia.com -- possibly the most famous of all Arab Web sites -- was enthusiastic about so-called incubators, which lend support and expertise to nascent IT initiatives in the Arab world, saying that these new dot-coms have the opportunity to learn from what happened in the West. He stressed the importance of Internet companies looking very carefully at their business models. Despite the plethora of Arab-oriented dot-coms springing up on the Net, Tabaza suggested that the Arab world's dot-com scene leaves plenty of room for newcomers.
The common thread throughout the two-day conference was that Egypt and the Arab world in general had IT and Internet penetration so low and the potential for growth so high that only a fool wouldn't give this new economy a try. Syria, for example, is looking at massive growth levels in Internet access -- between 4,000 and 10,000 currently and an expected 300,000 in three or four years. In 15 years, Syria expects some 600,000-850,000 Internet users. The opening up of telecommunication projects to the private sector should also help to drive the new economy.
Most commentators agreed that the place to start is with the young. In Egypt, young professionals and new graduates make up the bulk of the future work force, and the government is so eager to see them on the IT wave that it is training them for free. According to Mustafa Kamel of Cairo University, in the next decade, Egypt will need more than seven times the number of IT professionals it has now, which is estimated at 10,000. "We'll also need hundreds of thousands of lower-level technicians, of which we only have 30,000 now," Kamel said.
But becoming "a significant participant in the knowledge age," as Minister of Communications and Information Technology Ahmed Nazif put it in his inaugural remarks, means getting beyond some of the psychological barriers that Economy Minister Youssef Boutros Ghali touched in his concluding remarks. Ghali's so-called heretic's view of IT posits that it's not just about gathering and processing information, but making sure that the recipients of the information will know what to do with it. Will they understand and be able to use it? Only then will there be a revolution. IT is changing the way people think, but it is really just the catalyst for the revolution that is still to come.
Sculley had a similar philosophy on technology and human nature. He said that the most important thing for a new technology is that it is indispensable. The Internet is not yet at that stage, he noted. "It's useful, but if you shut it down, the world would go on."
Recommend this page
Related stories:
To e- or not to e- 22 - 28 February 2001
Related links:
Apple Computer, Inc
Arabia.com
Good News 4 Me
© Copyright Al-Ahram Weekly. All rights reserved
Send a letter to the Editor