Egypt is boosting its digital infrastructure, with big targets for the next few years

A look at the progress Egypt's making on the tech + digital infrastructure front: Egypt has spent over EGP 100 bn to expand its tech and digital infrastructure over the past five years, including expanding fiber optic cable networks, boosting internet connectivity and offering digital government services. A recent report published during the Story of a Homeland conference gives a snapshot of our tech infrastructure upgrades over the past years, and some targets for our digital services, exports and infrastructure for the next three years.

REMEMBER- ICT is one of the fastest-growing sectors in Egypt: Information and communication technology (ICT) is an exploding industry in Egypt. The sector outpaced all other state’s economic sectors in FY 2021/2022 with a growth rate of 16.7%, according to ITIDA, the executive IT arm of the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology. The sector made up 5% of the country’s GDP last year, the statement reads, while digital exports registered USD 4.9 bn.

Our internet infrastructure got a big shot in the arm from the state over the past years: The government has spent some USD 2 bn into boosting internet speeds since 2019, taking it to 42.5 megabytes per second in 2022, up from just 6.4 mbps in 2019. We also climbed eight spots in Speedtest’s January Monthly Global Index of mobile internet speed in February this year, making us the country with the fastest internet in Africa at the time, with median download speeds of 19.34 megabits per second (Mbps) putting us 88th out of 140 countries.

A big part of that has been the expansion of our fiber optic network: Some 18k governmental buildings have been fitted with fiber optics cables, with plans to connect 31.5k buildings in total to the network, according to the report. Meanwhile,some 2563 high schools have been connected to fiber optic cables in every governorate across the country, according to the report.