The Information Technology Industry Development Agency (ITIDA) announced Thursday recording a surge in the number of business services and IT jobs offshored to the country.
ITIDA stated that at least 19 global services providers and leading tech companies have announced their expansion plans in Egypt and 4 new market entrants established their offices, and R&D centers during the second quarter of the current year alone.
According to ITIDA, Vodafone Intelligent Solutions (_VOIS), a subsidiary of Vodafone Group and its partner of choice for talent, technology, and transformation, inaugurated its new office in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria, adding 1,000 new contact center jobs to serve Vodafone’s global customers in both German and English languages.
The expansion announcement isn’t the first of its kind this year. Following the COVID-19 pandemic and the demonstrated resilience the Egyptian ICT sector has shown, a long list of key outsourcing players has already announced their expansion plans, including Webhelp, Sutherland, PWC, STMicroelectronics, and many more. “We’re excited to see _VOIS expand its footprint in Egypt through the new office in Alexandria; a city with many competitive advantages, untapped and abundant tech talents, and multilingual capabilities,” commented CEO of ITIDA, Amr Mahfouz.
The geopolitical tension across other service locations has also augmented Egypt’s global appeal to investors and encouraged more demand from global enterprises choosing Egypt as their reliable offshoring destination and business services hub.
“The current geopolitical scene works in favor of Egypt and guides investors and global service providers toward the country, being an ideal unparalleled offshoring destination and global digital services delivery hub for the EMEA region”, Mahfouz stressed.
Mahfouz encouraged multinational companies to invest in tier 2 cities, where ample opportunities and talent are accessible at a competitive cost.
The inauguration of the new office adds to the mutual journey of productive cooperation and constructive partnership between ITIDA and VOIS. “The cooperation with VOIS is one of our outstanding successes in attracting and fostering foreign investment in the IT offshoring business and the IT sector at large,” Mahfouz added.
Egypt has seen an increase in its appeal to investors since the government launched a new incentive scheme for foreign investments in light of the Digital Egypt Strategy for the Offshoring Industry 2022-2026. The ambitious strategy, spearheaded by the IT Development Agency, propels the sector on a higher growth trajectory.
According to Egypt’s Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, the local ICT sector has achieved the highest growth rate of about 16.3% among different state sectors during the fiscal year (FY) 2021/2022. Egypt's digital exports hit USD 4.9 billion in the same period.
ITIDA’s CEO applauded the multilingual capabilities and skills of Egyptian youth working in the outsourcing sector. He noted that the current demand is certainly exceeding supply. He added that one of ITIDA’s strategic goals is to invest in developing digital and soft skills, and creating a talent pool that’s capable of building the knowledge economy.
VOIS Egypt’s office serves 14 markets around the world. The company makes annual investments of EGP3 billion in Egypt and exports services worth EUR145 million. In five years, VOIS aims to inject EGP18 billion and bring the value of its business in Egypt to one billion euros. In addition, the company targets increasing the size of its team from 8,600 to 10,000+ employees in its offices across Cairo and Alexandria, making it the second largest in terms of headcount across VOIS’ sites in Egypt, India, Hungary, and Romania.
The opening of the new office of VOIS underpins Egypt as an attractive investment destination for multinational companies such as Vodafone, which is keen to expand its global delivery business in Egypt.