Nashwa Ali, the head of Public Policies of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region at Facebook, said that there are about 24 million people using the website daily in Egypt, while the number of users who access it through mobile phones is nearly 37 million people on a monthly basis. Ali told Daily News Egypt that her company has recently hosted the ‘Boost Your Business' event for the very first time in Egypt this year, within the framework of its vision for the growth of start-ups. Over 250 owners of medium and small enterprises participated to benefit from the experiences of companies which used Facebook to develop their work, communicate with others, meet website experts and take part in the training. Globally, Facebook is helping local companies create over 60% new jobs. "We exerted great efforts to help local companies grow, hence, create more jobs and enhance communities," she indicated. Ali explained that the work team is constantly working to find free solutions, such as ‘pages', ‘Facebook jobs' which is the tool used to look for jobs, and training programmes such as ‘community boots' and e-learning tools, including ‘blueprint'. Regarding Facebook's vision of the local market in terms of investment opportunities and having more present in the future, Ali said that Egypt is a country rich with talents. "These major successes achieved by entrepreneurs and owners of start-ups have inspired us, which encouraged us to host the ‘Boost Your Business' event in Egypt this year, as this country has so much talent and potential," she said. Technology has offered so much support to the economy, and managed to help many discover local companies and communicate with them. Today, millions of local companies use Facebook and Instagram to start their businesses to start their work and communicate with clients in order to grow and increase trade and employment, remarked Ali. There are also plans to invest in more people, technologies and programmes to help local companies grow and support them in terms of gaining digital skills and finding new jobs. "We are well-aware that this advancement serves our communities, our economies, and each and every one of us," she stressed. Earlier this year, Facebook launched the ‘marketplace' service in Egypt, Algeria, and Morocco to help people who use Facebook to explore, purchase, and sell items. Concerning the total number of active users at the present time, Ali explained that there are over 2.6 billion Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger users. "In the past quarter, the number reached about 2.5 billion, but currently, on average, there are more than 2 billion people at least using one of our services on a daily basis," she elaborated. Users currently send nearly 100 billion messages daily, and the company's ‘messenger' service is ranked the second most popular, in terms of the number of daily correspondences through it.
