The fourth edition of the Global Manufacturing and Industrialization Summit (GMIS) was organized on November 22-27, in Dubai, UAE, under the theme “Rewiring Societies: Repurposing Digitalization for Prosperity.” The Summit brought together leaders and industry experts to discuss and debate the best ways to prepare for the post-Covid-19 recovery and determine the role of the industrial sector to accelerate this recovery.

The Minister of Communications and Information Technology Amr Talaat participated in the Summit on behalf of Prime Minster Mostafa Madbouly. Talaat delivered a talk at the “Society 5.0: Building super smart societies” session, which addressed several topics, including strategies aimed at improving the quality of life for citizens capitalizing on digital solutions and digitization as a means of sustainability, in addition to utilizing technological innovations in facing social challenges and enhancing human-machine interaction.

In his talk, Talaat stressed that Egypt is implementing many projects to build smart societies within Digital Egypt strategy, through which the latest global technologies are adopted to achieve the transformation into an integrated digital society. He added that 17 smart cities are being established along with the New Administrative Capital and that those cities run using smart digital technologies. This is in addition to projects that aim to make the Internet available to citizens through injecting capital to upgrade the information infrastructure nationwide.

The ICT Minister also highlighted that a project is carried out as part of Decent Life initiative to install fiber-optic cables and provide high-speed Internet to all the houses in the Egyptian countryside over the next three years to serve about 58% of the citizens. This will help achieve a breakthrough in the society through indigenizing technology and creating opportunities for deepening people’s knowledge, thus opening bigger labor markets, and providing excellent opportunities for training and education.

On the sidelines of the summit, the Information Technology Industry Development Agency (ITIDA) met with officials from Intel, Wipro and DXC to discuss cooperation and investment in the Egyptian ICT sector.