Amr Talaat, Minister of Communications and Information Technology, said that Egypt ranks first in the Middle East and North Africa in terms of the number of financing deals for start-ups, and second in terms of the value of investments. He explained that the ministry is working to support start-ups through a number of initiatives, including the deployment of Digital Egypt Creativity Centers spread in 8 governorates to support and incubate startups and train their work team, as well as providing training courses for them in various specializations, whether training on technical, marketing or administrative solutions as well as about connecting them with investors. The minister added that Egypt's Digital Innovation Centers provide incubation programmes for start-ups to ease their financial burdens and support them in networking with investors through global and regional events. He revealed the opening of 10 new centres by the end of this year in preparation for increasing them to 30 centres at an investment cost of EGP 5bn. The Minister of Communications indicated that the government, represented by the Ministry of Communications, made it a subsidiary to support the entrepreneurship sector and start-up companies to increase investments flowing from abroad to these companies. For his part, Ahmed Wadi, founder and CEO of MoneyFellows, said that the start-up market in Egypt attracted more than $500m last year, and is expected to exceed this value by the end of this year. He explained that the company was able to attract investments exceeding $40m, including $31m in the financing round that was closed a few days ago. MoneyFellows offers the association model in its well-known form, but with digital tools through a smartphone application, and the company has managed to attract about 4 million customers so far.
