CAIRO: In support of Nobel laureate Ahmed Zewail's City of Science and Technology, IPLMedia decided to dedicate 5 percent of its revenue to the project starting July. The project, which was launched in June by Egypt's Prime Minister Essam Sharaf along with Zewail, aims to help Egypt move forward with its scientific research and to encourage the future youth of Egypt. Nabil Afifi, general director of IPLMedia said that his company is happy to contribute to such a pioneering initiative in Egypt. According to Afifi, Zewail's city needs about $2 billion in order to achieve what it set out to do, “make dreams” of the youth come true and this will not happen unless the private sector along with institutions, organizations, and citizens all come together to help. “We're giving support from the very beginning of the revolution, we've launched a website called ‘3ashanekYaMasr.Com' to support the free young Egyptians, after January 25 we've launched an imitative called ‘Egypt Online' to empower small businesses with website capabilities,” said Afifi. “Now we offer a new national initiative to support one of the most important pillars to the renaissance of our country; science, without a strong scientific infrastructure the country will not benefit from the achievements of the great revolution of January 25.” The preliminary budget for the project is $1 billion fund and $1 billion in cash, according to Zewail. The full name of the project is The Zewail City of Science and Technology: Egypt's National Project for Scientific Renaissance. According to Zewail, the project is not a university; rather it is an “integrated city of sciences and research for the market and economy.” Zewail's City of Science and Technology is an independent non-profit organization, which would have its own draft law to ensure transparency, and will be proposed to the elected parliament. In order to make sure the organization remains independent, a board of trustees will be set. As of June, its members comprised six Nobel laureates and leading figures in a variety of fields, including Susan Hockfield, the President of MIT, and Gregorio L. Escario, the President of the Cebu Institute of Technology (CIT), as well as renowned international Egyptians Magdy Yacoub, Mohamed Ghonim and businessmen Mohamed El Erian and Amr Younis. The board of trustees will meet once or twice a year, while a board of consultants who will be based in Egypt with all-Egyptian members, who include Ghonim, Mostafa El Sayed, Hazem El Biblawi and others yet to be announced. Zewail also announced in June the opening of the national account number 10001000, where donations for the project would be encouraged and accepted. IPLMedia, an Egyptian-owned company founded in Alberta, Canada in 2005 is an integrated web solutions provider, which aims to offer services to local and international clients.
