Egypt hypes its offshore 'smart cred'

Egypt wants to position itself as a North African hub for business process outsourcing (BPO) and 'nearshore' contact centres.

The government is building a Smart Village in the desert 25km outside of Cairo which it hopes will attract companies keen to cut their costs through offshoring. It claims they can benefit from an educated workforce and good telecoms infrastructure.

Egypt's minister for communications and IT, Dr Tarek Kamel, told silicon.com this week: "Egypt has been investing in the development of people, infrastructure and the business environment."

He said his message to businesses trying to decide where to offshore their operations is: "Diversify your business, come and look at Egypt and the facilities we are offering and the incentives we are providing, the pool of talents that are available and then make your decision."

He added: "We are saying that the Egyptian market is in an embryonic phase. Employ Egyptian talents and use them regionally."

Egypt has been well known for its services-oriented culture, exporting doctors, engineers and teachers, he said. "The thing that is happening now is that it's - via technology - being done remotely," he said.

Business software giant Oracle has recently set up a global technical support centre in Cairo and has big plans to develop it further.

The Egyptian operation plugs a gap in coverage between India and Europe for Oracle. In July last year the centre had 20 engineers. That has now increased to 150 and is expected to rise to 420 by May 2007.

Graeme Mair, Oracle VP for global product support, said that in cost terms Egypt sits somewhere between India and Romania.

Speaking at the Offshore Customer Management conference in Cairo, he said: "It's been a success. We wouldn't be investing so much if it hadn't been a success.

"We have a good pool of talent to go after and it's a competitive cost environment. But there's no point going to a cheap place if you can't find the people."

James Mullock, partner at law firm Osborne Clarke, said: "Egypt has taken some steps to implement intellectual property laws and other business laws to bring it up to standard. Where the jury is out still is in how these new laws will be implemented, how they will work on the ground."