Global Governance, Globalisation, Headlines, Middle East & North Africa

COMMUNICATION: Egyptian Poor Find Virtual Wealth

Cam McGrath

CAIRO, Mar 2 2004 (IPS) - In a small, unadorned room young Egyptians complete homework assignments on PCs and browse the Internet oblivious of the incessant din of car horns, scratchy music and calls to prayer from a nearby mosque.

“At first I couldn’t understand anything,” says Ahmed, a 19-year-old assistant to a carpenter busily sending e-mails. “Now I can read a little. I learnt by watching my friends use chat software.”

This cyber café on the outskirts of Cairo is the frontline in Egypt’s battle to bridge the technology gap. Thousands of tiny hovels like this one act as informal classrooms for young Egyptians whose families cannot afford a home computer.

The average Egyptian family of six earns 1,500 dollars per year while a locally assembled PC costs around 400 dollars. Privately run cyber cafes allow use of a computer at a more affordable 50 cents an hour.

Many of their patrons admit spending their time playing games, sending e-mail to friends, or chatting. The Ministry of Communication and Information Technology (MCIT) hopes to direct this energy to something more constructive, like turning Egypt into a regional IT hub.

“Under any circumstances, getting people to sit and use a computer is our objective,” Ikram Abdel Gawad, MCIT human resources development and training programmes manager told IPS. “Chatting and playing games is not bad as a beginning, but we hope to give our youth the knowledge to do something else.”

IT is one of the fastest growing sectors in Egypt, swelling at an average annual rate of 16 percent since 1998. The value of the sector has climbed from 730 million dollars in 2000 to an estimated 1.3 billion dollars today. The government predicts 200 percent growth over the coming two years.

Achieving this will not be easy. With the illiteracy rate hovering around 45 percent, building a competitive labour force in an industry where reading, writing and English fluency are considered essential tools will be an uphill battle.

But Abdel Gawad remains optimistic. “We are moving faster in removing computer illiteracy than reading illiteracy,” he said.

The number of Internet users has risen threefold since state-run Telecom Egypt did away with costly Internet subscription fees in early 2002. Three million Egyptians now surf the web.

In an attempt to bring others online, the ministry has opened more than 1,100 IT clubs in community centres nationwide. The clubs offer basic computer instruction and extensive software libraries. Many also provide Internet access for a nominal fee.

“We have been successful in supplying IT services in some places where other services do not exist,” says Gawad. “There are rural areas in Egypt where you cannot find clean water or sewage treatment, but you can find IT.”

Analysts say real growth will not come until Egyptians have access to computers in their own homes. Currently less than one percent of the population owns a PC.

“It is important to get more computers in homes because every home with a computer means five or six people can learn how to use it,” IT consultant Ahmed Sarhan told IPS.

In an effort to speed up home computer ownership, the government launched the ‘PC in Every Home’ initiative in late 2002. The private-public partnership offers families Internet-ready computers on monthly instalments with a low down payment and no deposit.

“The goal is to make PCs affordable,” Mokbel Fayyad, chief executive officer of Centra Technologies, one of 18 suppliers participating in the programme told IPS. “Over 56,000 PCs were sold last year [through the initiative] with a 96 percent collection rate from the end user.”

Customers are given flexible payment options. One 40-month instalment programme costs less than 15 dollars a month.

“After one year they can change to a new PC by returning the old one and paying the difference in instalments,” said Fayyad. “We will take the old one and refurbish it, then sell it again.”

The government is also looking to the private sector for assistance in IT education and training. Microsoft provides 100,000 Egyptian university students each year with trademark software at modest prices.

“We were able to work out an umbrella agreement with Microsoft that helped to get the prices down,” Minister for Communication and IT Ahmed Nazif told a recent conference on IT. The programme proved successful because “the prices were affordable enough to discourage piracy, but also [because] the government made sure the students paid.”

MCIT has taken on eleven multinationals as partners for its free IT training programmes. The companies provide instructors for intensive courses that allow university students and fresh graduates to earn international standard certification in various areas of IT specialisation. More than 90,000 youth have graduated since the programmes began three years ago.

“It is really a win-win situation,” says Yasser El-Kady, regional director of operations at Cisco Systems. “By putting our plans in line with the government’s we can upgrade the level of young people and use [these graduates] in our own company and partner companies.”

So far, 800 students have graduated from the Cisco-sponsored programme, which specialises in network connectivity.

“We are monitoring the success of the student graduates,” said El-Kady. “Some are now working with Cisco here or in the Middle East; some are working with our partners and some are working with our end users.”

There is a lot of crossover. Many graduates go on to work for rival IT firms or leave the sector altogether.

Hassan Sabri, a graduate of a Microsoft programme, was first snapped up by Hewlett-Packard. He now works as a solution architect at IBM.

“It’s a very competitive field,” he told IPS. “We need to improve the capabilities of our youth to compete in the IT sector, which has become a global market.”