When it comes to e-knowledge, Egypt is perhaps better positioned than many think. Nader Habib listens to the specialists "We do not need to know what others think of us. We need to show them how to see things our way. We need to believe in our own vision and economic outlook. Investors come to Egypt in pursuit of high returns, but we too gain from their activities," is how IBM Egypt's Director Ahmed Tantawi spoke of Egypt's economy. Speaking at a conference marking the 100th issue of the publication of Loghat Al-Asr (The Language of the Era), Tantawi added that unemployment may be running over eight per cent, "But we have to remember that 92 per cent still have jobs, which means that we can lay down a multi-faceted strategy, retrain our workers, and manage our finances in a more fruitful manner." The event, sponsored by the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology and the Information Industry Development Agency (ITIDA), hosted a multitude of experts. Peter Bruck, chairman of the board of directors at the World Summit Award (WSA), opened the conference by calling on specialists to highlight Egyptian culture and increase the Arabic language content on their websites. The WSA is a global initiative to select and promote the world's best e-Content and innovative ICT applications. Bruck urged the young to innovate and create new e-product, citing the example of Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook. Susan Teltcher, head of market information and statistics division at the International Telecommunication Union (IUT), said that no economic sector is immune to the global financial crisis. Yet she pointed out that developing countries spend on average 0.3 per cent of their income on ICT. And the use of mobile phones has gone up from 57 per cent in 2008 to 74 per cent in 2009. With this in mind Tantawi of IBM called for grasping opportunities. He pointed out that global e-commerce accounts for $24 trillion per year. "This means that we have to create a different type of infrastructure, one that is geared to catch a larger slice of this trade. Being smart is being part of the future," he said. Tareq Abbadi of the Microsoft Innovation Centre says that Egypt is full of innovators who cannot, due to migration restrictions, seek jobs abroad. "This is why we Microsoft came to Egypt, to tap into local skills and cultivate a talent pool that we may rely on in the future," he said. The government has sponsored growth in the ICT sector, through education, training, and other means, Abbadi said, making the industry more sustainable, reliable, and beneficial to the economy. However, he lamented that although investment in ICT peaked at $1.3 billion in 2008, only three per cent of that figure actually goes to programming. According to government statistics, the country has 10,000 new ICT graduates every year, but only one out of 10 of those end up working in programming, "an evident loss of human skills," Abbadi added.
