Amr Mahfouz: Technology exports in Egypt will reach $7 billion in 2024, with conditions.

September 22, 2023

1 4 minutes read

In his interview with the Ta3heed , Engineer Amr Mahfouz, former CEO of the Information Technology Industry Development Authority (ITIDA), reviewed his vision for the outsourcing industry in Egypt and the opportunities and challenges facing the industry.

Industry of the future

“It is the industry of the future and hope for Egypt.” With this phrase, engineer Amr Mahfouz began his optimistic talk about this industry, in which he is one of the important parties, and which contributed to developing Egypt’s digital strategy for cross-border services 2022-2026.

In the beginning, Engineer Amr said that the “ITIDA” launched in 2021 the Digital Egypt Strategy for Cross-Border Services 2022-2026, and in late 2022 a number of new agreements and contracts were signed between the Information Technology Industry Development Authority “ITIDA” and 29 international companies to provide 34 thousand All jobs are for export.

He continued: “As soon as the strategy was announced and its features were reviewed, we held quarterly meetings with companies specialized in outsourcing services and all parties associated with this industry to discuss its problems.”

We also launched a committee called “Industry Challenges” to solve companies’ problems with various parties, indicating that many of these problems were solved immediately.

He explained that most problems were procedural, and once all relevant parties were seated at one table they were resolved.

Technology exports in Egypt will reach $7 billion under conditions

He pointed out that the outsourcing industry provides extensive job opportunities, especially in call centers and business services, and also provides huge revenues for countries that pay attention to it.

For example, this industry provides the Philippines with more than $30 billion annually, $150 billion for India, and in Egypt it currently provides $5 billion, with expectations of growth in the coming years.

Increasing the volume of technological exports requires confronting industry challenges

He pointed out that increasing the volume of technological exports requires confronting the challenges facing the outsourcing industry in Egypt. It is important to develop and provide graduates’ skills, as a university graduate must be professionally prepared for the labor market.

He stated that the three most important languages that are in high demand in Egypt are German, French, and English. These languages require training of up to 6 months to improve the level of the language. Here comes the need for cooperation and coordination between the Ministries of Communications and Higher Education to improve the language level of students and link curricula to the needs of the labor market, so that they are qualified. for jobs in the future.

This is in addition to the need to develop skills and improve the quality of graduates. We have 600,000 university and higher institute graduates annually in Egypt, including 230,000 graduates of practical colleges. This large number must have their skills developed during their studies through curricula that keep pace with the needs of the labor market and not after its completion in order to save time and money. .

He stated that 60,000 graduates out of the 600,000 come from colleges and institutes related to communications and information technology, and we need at least 10,000 of them annually to work in the industry related to outsourcing, stressing that the demand exists for digital skills and the volume of demand is much greater than the supply.

Promoting Egypt

Another important matter that will contribute to increasing Egypt’s revenues from this industry is promoting Egypt as an important outsourcing destination no less important than India and the Philippines.

We need to put it more on the global map. Our presence in relevant forums and exhibitions, advertising campaigns and digital marketing will contribute greatly to our promotion.

Egypt has a great diversity of languages that it provides to companies, which makes it an important destination for those seeking services in this industry.

Another very important matter that will make this industry achieve breakthroughs and great returns is solving the problems of some current companies, which are residency problems for some foreign employees, the release of production requirements, especially electronic circuits, and the tax problems that some people suffer from.

Solving these problems will encourage new companies to enter the Egyptian market, as new companies ask their counterparts before establishing themselves.

Providing special guarantees for companies

Another important point is the necessity of providing special guarantees to companies to ensure that they obtain their dollar revenues easily, instead of some of them deceiving themselves and establishing holding companies to deposit money in, which means that part of the dollar revenues of this industry does not enter Egypt and is not benefited from.

Artificial intelligence and its impact on the outsourcing industry

It was important to address artificial intelligence and its impact on this industry, and when asked about it, engineer Amr said that the labor market in general will change, and that typical jobs will completely disappear and will be replaced by “AI.”

He pointed out that artificial intelligence will improve the efficiency of work in call centers, especially monitoring the efficiency of calls. Currently, artificial intelligence listens to calls and has the ability to know whether a customer is satisfied or not just by hearing his voice. Thus, companies have the ability to monitor calls 100% to evaluate the performance of their employees.

He pointed out that in the near future, artificial intelligence will also have the ability to answer the call, indicating that fears of the development of AI have made the world demand the necessity of setting standards to monitor artificial intelligence and limit its harms that may be exploited.