ITIDA Roadshow Makes Its First Stop in Mansoura University to Promote Egypt’s Offshoring Strategy

The Information Technology Industry Development Agency (ITIDA) has organized the first event of its Roadshow series at the middle of the Nile Delta in Mansoura University. The roadshow comes as part ITIDA’s plan to promote the recently-announced Digital Egypt strategy for Offshoring Industry 2022-2026 across Egyptian governorates.

ITIDA has launched these series of events, taking place across Egyptian universities, aiming to link young talent to the job market, by identifying the in-demand skills, and to inspire the graduates and fresh grads to join the booming offshoring sector.

The event, held inside MCIT’S CREATIVA Innovation Hub at the heart of Mansoura university, is one of the actionable recommendation provided through the newly five-year offshoring strategy, which primarily aims to triple the export revenues from digitally-enabled offshoring services, in addition to improving the overall cost competitiveness of Egypt’s offshoring industry, and to attract more foreign direct investment through an attractive incentive scheme.

The Roadshow featured MCIT’s and ITIDA’s initiatives and training programs to reach out the maximum number of students and fresh graduates in different governorates and equip them with technology, language and freelance skills.

CEO of ITIDA, Engineer Amr Mahfouz, and the President of Mansoura University, Dr. Ashraf Abdel Basset along with a number of senior executives and CEOs of local and multinational companies including Ahmed Bahgat, Site Director at Sitel, Ramy Kato, Head of Care and at _VOIS Egypt Center, and Ahmed Refky, CEO of Raya Contact Center, Valeo, Webhelp, Talabat, and ITIDA VPs, participated in the event.

ITIDA CEO stated that ITIDA plans to organize a series of events, to promote the golden opportunities the sector offers and increase the inclusion of industry stakeholders, such as local universities, academia and key industry players. “The aim of our roadshow series is to benefit Egyptian youth from the initiatives and grants offered by the Ministry of communications and Information Technology and ITIDA, and to leverage the abundance of talent in each and every governorate and ensure it has a fair chance to participate in our training programs” he remarked.

The event incorporated several workshops and seminars showcasing the available opportunities, and the highly demanded career paths in the offshoring and BPO sector, among which are finance and accounting, human resources, procurement and different business and IT services.

“The new strategy includes detailed programs and initiatives developed to reach youth across Egypt and to upskill them professionally, according to the demands of each geographical region, and the highly demanded languages in the global market.”, Mahfouz added.

For his part, Dr. Ashraf Abdel Basset, President of Mansoura University, said that the fourth industrial revolution along with the COVID-19 pandemic acted as catalysts to the technological development and accelerated the digital transformation, which created unprecedented demand in the digital skills and enriched the IT job market.

Basset also pointed out that CREATIVA Innovation Hubs were established in cooperation between the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT) and the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research. He added that these centers support the Egyptian 2030 strategy, which fosters innovation and entrepreneurship within universities and research centers, supports digital transformation, qualifies students for the job market through various training programs and accordingly creates diverse job opportunities.

During the forum, ITIDA announced the launch of the “Learn to Go Offshoring” program (L2GO), a free language skills program, and part of ITIDA’s five-year Offshoring strategy. The program aims at attracting more investments to the market through upskilling the talent pool in Egypt.

The program targets to train to 10k students within one year on the most demanded languages, namely, English, French and German; as well as soft skills, including project management, customer interactions, team leadership etc. The program enables trainees to obtain a B2 language level, which is the required level to work in the Offshoring sector, according to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR). The program targets fourth-year university students in addition to fresh graduates.

Moreover, ITIDA announced the official launch of the second edition of Egypt FWD, Egypt FWD 2.0. The new edition provides a number of technological disciplines designed to provide specialized technical training at various levels in the most demanded areas in the job market, such as web design and development, data analysis and cloud computing, machine learning, UX researcher, React Developer, and digital marketing.

Egypt FWD 2.0 aims to prepare students for the job market through a fully digital freelancing training, Agile Management training and career consultations. In addition to the training, students will have access to many opportunities, whether in freelancing or employment in tech fields.

It is worth noting that the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT) has launched “Digital Egypt Strategy for the Offshoring Industry 2022-2026” to unlock new growth potential in Egypt’s well-established global IT service delivery and targets adding 215k new jobs.