Egypt has invested a lot of money in the digital industry in recent years. The massive investment underscores the importance of outsourcing in bolstering the country’s digital exports and economic growth.

Exports of digital services should generate $5.5 billion for Egypt in the 2022-2023 fiscal year, thus raising telecom’s share in the country’s GDP to over 5%. The forecast was disclosed last Saturday, July 8, by the Egyptian Minister of Telecom and IT, Amr Talaat. This was during an interview at Cairo’s Information and Decision Support Center (IDSC).

Talaat attributes the positive forecast to recent foreign investments, including the opening of local outsourcing centers by US and Indian tech giants. Indeed, last December, Egypt inked 29 agreements with international companies, including IBM, Amazon, Microsoft, and Dell Technology, to build outsourcing centers in the country.

The various investments fall under Cairo’s 2022-2026 digital strategy for the outsourcing industry 2022-2026. Launched in February 2022, the strategy has four pillars: IT services, business process services, knowledge services, and engineering and research and development.

The Egyptian government wants to leverage the strategy to triple its digital exports earnings, which should add $1 billion to the country's digital exports by 2025 and create more than 34,000 jobs.

In the 2021-222 fiscal year, digital exports earned Egypt $4.9 billion, against $3.6 billion in 2018-2019.

Samira Njoya