COMMUNICATION-EGYPT: New IT Links With Europe

By Cam McGrath Reprint | | Print |

Cam McGrath

CAIRO, Jun 28 2002 (IPS) - The European Commission has picked 14 Egyptian partners to build new information links between Mediterranean countries and the European Union.

The projects will be carried out under the Euro-Mediterranean Information Society (Eumedis) initiative, a 65-million dollar programme, the European Commission (EC) announced in Cairo Thursday.

“The purpose of these projects is not to fund hardware and infrastructure,” said EU Ambassador to Egypt Ian Boag. “It is to exchange ideas and information, put people in contact with one another and remove barriers…there is no doubt that both parties will benefit.”

The regional information society is being developed to link the 15 member states of the EU and a group of 12 Mediterranean countries: Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, the Palestinian Authority, Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, Cyprus and Malta.

The Eumedis programme launched in 1999 is spread over five areas: cultural heritage and tourism, health care, education, e-commerce and research for industrial development.

The first step was creation of focal points, one in each country, to co-ordinate government strategy for development of the programme. Egypt set up its focal point in the Information Society Development Office (ISDO) affiliated to the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology.

“The focal point works in matchmaking between partners,” ISDO director Dr. Sherif Hashem told IPS. “It follows up projects and facilitates networking and government access.”

The ISDO encourages government, non-governmental organisation (NGO) and private sector bodies to participate in the Eumedis initiative, and reports its findings to EC headquarters in Brussels, Hashem said.

The Egyptian presence is particularly strong in Strabon, a 3.7 million dollar project to create a web portal documenting the cultural heritage of Egypt and of 11 other countries – France, Italy, Portugal, Greece, Malta, Algeria, Tunisia, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and the Palestinian Authority.

“The Strabon project is a multi-lingual information system for Euro-Mediterranean cultural heritage,” says Dr. Fathi Saleh, director of Egypt’s National Centre for Documentation of Cultural and Natural Heritage (Cultnat). “It will create online access to cultural resources of the Mediterranean.”

Cultnat is playing a leading role in implementation of the project, for which the EU has paid 2.9 million dollars. It has already set up its own Internet site on Egypt’s cultural heritage, covering archaeology, architecture, natural resources, folklore, music and photography.

The multimedia site has taken on the formidable task of documenting 7,000 years of Egyptian cultural heritage – everything from artefacts on display in the Egyptian Museum to the lyrics of legendary singer Om Kulthoum.

The Strabon project will build on Cultnat’s existing work to create similar sites in the other 11 countries. The project is due to be completed in 2005.

But the relatively small budgets for the 16 pilot projects could limit their implementation. The bigger challenge could be constraints within some countries.

“The telecommunications sector in most Arab countries is still overwhelmingly controlled by the government, which monopolises every detail and is slow to reform,” says Amr Moussa, general manager of Egyptian Information Services (EIS), a Cairo-based Internet service provider.

Egypt has formulated legislation to liberalise its telecommunications sector and regulate competition, but the draft law has been tied up in parliament for three years. It has also failed, despite numerous promises, to privatise its fixed-line monopoly, Telecom Egypt.

Without such basic reforms, Egypt may find it difficult to pull its weight in the Eumedis initiative, which has offered it a substantial role, analysts say.