The Social Fund for Development (SFD) has financed about 4590 projects totally or partly based on modern technological inputs with EGP 85 million since it was established, said Ghada Wali, secretary general of SFD. On the sidelines of Youth Employment Generation in Egypt Conference organized by the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, Wali revealed that the number of technological projects is so small as compared to the number of other projects in Egypt, stressing the importance of increasing the number of these projects in the upcoming period. SFD signed an agreement with Information and Communication Technology Outsourcing (ITIDA) after 2011's revolution to finance 23 small companies in Information and Communications Technology sector with EGP 30 million, she noted. Wali affirmed that the mangers of these projects are in need to be trained on marketing skills not only to be financed, noting that there are several initiatives by SFD in collaboration with the Ministry of Communications to support small and medium-sized enterprises in this field in order to create many jobs. SFD also signed an agreement with the World Bank to finance SMEs in the field, she added. SFD is about to launch a project to mechanize the borrowing process by which customers can deal with SFD through its website without going to one of its branches, she added.
