Egypt ICT minister in talks with Nokia and Finnish officials

Egypt's ICT minister Yasser ElKady has held talks with the Permanent Mission of Finland Deputy Head Petri Hautaniemi and representatives of Nokia to discuss a strategic cooperation between the two countries in technological innovation and entrepreneurship, by developing a roadmap that includes the establishment of a centre to sponsor Finnish and Egyptian start-ups.

Egyptian and Finnish cooperation talks have gone on since 2013, with visits and high-level meetings between officials of the ICT ministry, ITIDA with the Finnish side, represented by the Embassy of Finland, and Nokia, in order to enable technological solutions in various sectors, including aquaculture.

ElKady said that Egypt is currently implementing programmes to support technological innovation, including electronics, mobile applications and electronic games. The schemes support entrepreneurs to provide a supportive technological environment and opportunities, embrace, attract and promote investors at the national and international levels and protect the property intellectual rights of their innovations.

He said that Egypt seeks to build a base of skilled workers in the areas required by the labour market, such as artificial intelligence techniques, big data analysis and Internet of Things (IoT), to serve different sectors such as health, education, industry and commerce.