The Egyptian Minister of Communications and IT, Amr Talaat noted that Egypt is taking steady steps towards building a digital state. He made these remarks during the Egyptian-Lebanese Association of Businessmen’s (ELBA) held this week.
As remarked, The Egyptian Ministry of Communications and Information Technology has a three axis strategy, digital transformation, providing highly efficient and stable telecommunication services, and providing digital job opportunities for youth.
He announced that Egypt has entered into a new phase of digital services incorporating electronic signature. Previously the electronic signature system was activated in several stages, starting with its activation in government applications, where government employees used the electronic signature at work, then came the stage of activating the electronic signature system in applications for enterprises and companies which included examples such as the electronic invoice in cooperation with the Ministry of Finance. The latest phase is the application to citizens’ services, where consular services for Egyptians residing abroad will begin.
In addition the government digital transformation project has also been implemented to enable government agencies to exchange data, allowing Egyptian citizens to utilize one government portal to access and transact with the government under the Digital Egypt Platform. Giant data centres have also been established at the highest technical level to host and preserve citizens’ data.
Digital Egypt platform currently includes more than 130 government services.
Talaat noted, ‘There are a number of digital transformation projects being implemented with investments of more than 15 billion EGP (Egyptian Pound) equivalent to almost 8 million USD.
The projects include the digitization off the agricultural tenure system, health insurance system, the law enforcement system, economic courts with remote litigation system, and real estate licensing system.
The Minister also noted that more than 90% of the data traffic between East and West passes through Egyptian lands and waters. Egypt’s Ministry of Communications and Information Technology is set to expand the international infrastructure outside Egypt by increasing the number of submarine cables, and expanding and developing the international infrastructure inside Egypt.
To date Egypt has expanded the local network that transmits data from the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea was doubled to increase from 2,700 km to more than 5,000 km.
