Displaying items by tag: Yasser ElKady

French telecom giant Orange hosted the Egyptian Minister of Communications and Information Technology, HE Eng. Yasser ElKady, at its facilities in Paris, France, from July 17-18. Orange hosted the Minister to reinforce its presence in Egypt – a presence of “utmost importance” for Orange’s future development in Africa and the Middle East.

The Minister was welcomed by the Egyptian Ambassador in Paris, Ehab Badawi and by Jean-Marc Harion, CEO of Orange Egypt. He also met with several members of the Group’s Executive Committee including Bruno Mettling (Orange Group Deputy CEO; Chairman and CEO of Orange Middle East & Africa), and Mari-Noëlle Jégo-Laveissière (Orange Group Senior Executive Vice-President of Innovation, Marketing and Technologies).

“We are honored to host his Excellency Engineer Yasser Al-Kady at the Orange Group’s headquarters in Paris. The Group’s presence in Egypt is of utmost importance to our future development in Africa and the Middle East, and we have great confidence in the potential for development within the Egyptian economy,” said Mr. Mettling.

“This visit also reflects the Orange Group’s willingness to work with the Egyptian Ministry of Communication and Information Technology in order to strengthen cooperation between our two countries in a context that encourages foreign investment.”

The Minister visited Orange’s flagship smart store in central Paris and the Group’s innovation campus, Orange Gardens. The emblematic smart store was opened in November 2016 and showcases the Group's approach to customer experience, which is a key element of its strategy.

He also visited the Group’s new innovation campus in Chatillon, Orange Gardens, which was inaugurated in June 2016 by the former French President François Hollande. The 72,000m² eco-friendly site brings together more than 3,000 employees across all areas of research and innovation.

The campus was conceived to foster new ways of working to increase Orange’s innovation capabilities and better interact with the Group’s other innovation centers across the globe. During the visit, the Minister was able to witness first-hand the latest advances made by Orange as it prepares for the future launch of 5G networks.

The Minister also attended meetings organized with senior managers on topics such as opportunities for telecom operators in the fields of mobile money, energy or m-agriculture.  Exchanges were also held on the Group’s efforts to support start-ups, notably through Orange Digital Ventures, as well on topics related to the B2B market including smart cities and cyber-defense.

As a result of the meetings, Orange is contemplating leveraging the opportunities offered by new technology zones, including in Assyut, to install customer service centers. Also, as part of the Orange Group's interest in supporting emerging, innovative companies, it was agreed to support and fund technology-focused start-ups in Egypt to help them to transform their ideas into reality while creating a sustainable business model.

Egypt’s Minister for Communications and Information Technology, His Excellency Eng. Yasser El Kady, was an esteemed guest of the Telecom Review Summit 2016. Eng. El Kady received the Award for ‘Telecom Leader of the Year for Government and Non-Profit Organizations’ for his expertise in serving the industry for over 25 years, enabling him to gain solid experience in technology transformation strategies and planning for Egypt and the Region.

Throughout his career, he worked on implementing several development initiatives to support entrepreneurship, talent development and export of IT products and services. Minister El Kady gave an inspiring keynote speech at the Summit, in which he started by examining how Egypt and the UAE can share progressive plans for sustainable development.

During his keynote speech, Eng. El Kady explained that in Egypt, and in other regions, governments are now executing sustainable development plans, noting that Egypt’s sustainable development strategy bears the title “Egypt Vision 2030”. The main pillars of the Strategy include social justice, knowledge and innovation and economic development. “ICTs are at the core of this Vision and over 30 projects have been implemented”.

Minister El Kady highlighted the importance of political support and backing to effectively execute aggressive and innovative transformational plans, stating that the leadership of the nation extends full support for the ICT sector.

The Minister shared the recent deployment of national telecom and IT infrastructure projects, emphasizing improved services offered to the citizens, he also referred to the successful awarding of the 4G licenses to Egypt’s four operators, allowing them to offer numerous new services for their subscribers.

Minister El Kady also shared at the Summit his vision for smart communities in Egypt, highlighting an official mandate that all new cities should be smart; the first being the New Capital. The Minister also emphasized Egypt’s successful experience in developing technology zones (due to develop seven) each embracing an innovation and entrepreneurship center to work on new technologies, generate intellectual property and address local as well as global challenges.

Eng. El Kady asserts that Egypt is considered a very lucrative market for business, and remains confident about his sector, “we are growing positively this year, from one digit to double digits– 10.5%; the sector is contributing by 3.2% to the GDP and we expect this contribution to continue to grow,” the Minister said. .

Minister El Kady asserted that the Egyptian government has recently taken important steps for economic reform, “as a consequence foreign investment in the ICT sector started to flow. Electronic manufacturing stands on top of our agenda; currently four international manufacturing entities have decided to invest in Egypt by establishing facilities in the new technology zones of Assiyut (south of Egypt) and Borg El Arab (north of Egypt), they are due to start production Q1 2017.” He added: “We have aggressive plans to export out of Egypt to meet regional and global demand.”