ITIDA joins as founding partner of WITSA

The agreement highlights ITIDA's continuous efforts to engage the global ICT arena through active and productive dialogue with international bodies and prestigious consortiums like the World Information Technology and Services Alliance (WITSA).

The founding partner agreement will help ITIDA in carrying out one its important tasks as it will enable the agency to better communicate with more than 5100 companies in Australia, Canada, France, India, United Kingdom, Japan and the United States, representing the WITSA member associations. Such a contact would prove essential as Egypt is eyeing more foreign direct investments and seeking to establish herself as an ICT hub in the Middle East.

Egypt now hosts 1,600 ICT companies providing 40,000 new jobs, and has become one of the world's top 20 offshore destinations, according to the annual global services ranking compiled by consultancy A.T. Kearney. At number 13, Egypt occupies the top spot in the Middle East and North Africa region, beating neighbors Jordan (14) and United Arab Emirates (20), despite their aggressive pursuit of offshore business. Egypt has the largest talent base of any country in the Middle East and is home to an increasing number of outsourcing centers operated by multinationals, commented the consultancy.

Attracting global outsourcing business is a key to rapid growth in the ICT sector, as witnessed in India, which occupies the number one spot on A.T. Kearney's rankings.

Apart from the promotional merits, ITIDA will be able to give the WITSA, other founding partners, and members a glimpse of the developments that the Egyptian ICT sector has witnessed. Being in a founding partner seat, ITIDA would be in a position to host and attend a wide range of international events and conferences, maintain direct contact with CEOs and decision makers, and promote Egypt' status as an important regional player in the ICT field.

The agreement will also broaden the WITSA founding partners' scope as ITIDA will be the only entity from the MENA region in the founding partners group. Including ITIDA in the WITSA founding partners will benefit the alliance as it will present its members with a chance to get first hand information about Egypt and they would be able to forge closer ties with an emerging ICT market.

The mutual cooperation between the WITSA and ITIDA marks the two entities' resolve to bolster and facilitate the sharing of knowledge, experience and critical information.

Aiming at advancing and nurturing the IT industry in Egypt, the Information Technology Industry Development Agency (ITIDA) was established in 2004 to act as the developer and promoter of the Egyptian IT industry. Relying on unequivocal governmental support, ITIDA utilizes a vast array of advantages and privileges bestowed on Egypt and synchronizes public and private efforts in order to place the country high on the global market' scale.

Armed with commitment and insight, ITIDA manifests its perspective with a number of programs carefully designed to enhance the Egyptian Information Technology Industry and to promote Industry/Universities collaboration, through linking academic research with industry and market needs. These collaborative research programs are bringing value to IT companies, universities, researchers and the ICT community. The programs include product development projects, advance research projects, student graduation projects and summer training projects.

Through its Intellectual Property Rights Office (IPR), ITIDA aims at ensuring an effective enforcement of the Copyright Law by fighting piracy and sanctioning all infringements in order to guarantee an efficient protection to computer programs and databases. The Office also raises awareness and understanding of intellectual property rights among the software community, as well as the public. In addition, the Office actively cooperates with different bodies concerned with the intellectual property rights on both national and international levels. The IPR Office administers the deposit of computer programs and databases and provides licenses for reproducing and translating computer programs and databases for educational purposes. Furthermore, the Office provides mandatory permission to practicing activity to software enterprises.