By Mohammed Talaat, Vice-President, SELL at Dell Technologies
Despite the uncertainties of the past year, Egypt has steadily progressed on its digital transformation journey by leveraging technology to tackle the pandemic and enable business continuity. This year is no different, with technology playing an even more crucial role in driving economic recovery and accelerating the digital transformation agenda for the country. As part of Egypt’s ICT 2030 Strategy which is led by The Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT), the nation aims to transform into a globally competitive ICT hub with modern technologies and an empowered information society. In fact, according to a report from MCIT, the ICT market in Egypt has reached EGP 93 billion in 2019.
As the country continues to push forward with its efforts for a diverse and digital economy, let’s look at the major shifts that are expected to drive the growth of the ICT industry over the coming year.
- Hybrid cloud in the “new normal”
Cloud – inclusive of multiple public, private and edge clouds – will become the default way of doing business and further define the IT experience.Cloud collaboration has become an essential contributor to remote working as it provides organizations the advantages of flexibility, accessibility, and scalability. It has also played an essential role in facilitating business continuity across both the private and public sector, by ensuring smooth cloud-based collaboration systems for remote working environments.
CIOs in Egypt will have cloud deployments as part of their digital roadmaps this year, as remote working is here to stay, and widespread adoption of cloud-based services is set to accelerate digital transformation in the country.
- Edge, IoT and Data Analytics will define the digital future of cities
As technology advances, the digital infrastructure becomes not only another utility delivered by cities, but the conduit to connect existing utilities and services together, and to deliver new and innovative ones. Egypt’s cities have long been centers of connection and we will continue to see the critical role that edge and IoT technologies can play in enabling these cities to become hubs of innovation in an ever-growing, ever-connected world. Employing IoT gives the ability to connect devices at different places and access them from one location and also enables the development of a number of applications that make use of potentially enormous amount and variety of data generated by these resources to provide new services to citizens, companies and public administrations.
Alongside this, fueled by increased 5G adoption and proliferation of connected devices, organizations across every industry are now looking to edge technology as a means to improve agility and customer experiences. The ability to analyze and act on data insights at the edge will be transformative and provide a competitive advantage to those who adopt it. Connected and intelligent sensors, powered by the edge, will give way to new capabilities and insights across industries.
The world of technology will continue to evolve, and as a result, aDigital City Platform must be designed to continuously absorb and leverage these technological changes.
- Industries embracing Artificial Intelligence (AI)
AI is expected to be a major contributor to Egypt’s digital GDP, as it seeks to establish AI as a driving force behind the advancement of many of the country’s key sectors. It is expected that many industries, from healthcare to manufacturing, will adopt some level of AI to increase efficiency and automation, while encouraging growth towards the future needs of the market.
Cognitive technologies are the fastest growing area in modern computing. Applications that previously required human intelligence, including data analytics, complex processing, statistical modelling, and visualizations are now augmented by powerful machine learning algorithms, shortening the time between ideas and results. This growth is expected to accelerate as businesses move forward in today’s data era.
- 5G is set to power Egypt’s digital connectivity
Egypt has come a long way in driving digital connectivity for its citizens as the country has a high mobile and internet penetration rate.The number of internet users in Egypt increased by 4.5 million (+8.1%) between 2020 and 2021 with internet penetration standing at 57.3% according to a report from Datareportal. As the very first mobile infrastructure built in the cloud era, 5G will be an indispensable part of enabling stronger connectivity. The new era of 5G networks will see not only technology innovations and operational innovations, but also business model innovations that result in intelligent devices and applications consuming and generating data like never before.
To conclude:
As 2021 continues to unfold, these transformative technologies will be key drivers of progress as Egypt strives towards the goals of its 2030 ICT strategy. The adoption of these technologies and drive for digital inclusion being pushed forward by the government will continue to offer effective solutions and benefits to businesses, citizens and the economy, while preparing them for the digital future.
