For the future
THE 11th annual Al-Ahram Computer and Information Technology Exhibition (ACITEX) held last week at the Cairo International Conference Centre, brought together 200 companies and a flood of visitors, including Eman Youssef.
Inaugurated by Minister of Communications and Information Technology Ahmed Nazif, the four-day exhibit offered the latest in hardware, software, multimedia, telecommunications, computers and networking services.
The opening was attended by Ali Ghoneim, deputy chairman and general manager of the Al-Ahram Organisation, Hassan Hamdi, general manager for advertising and Mohamed Youssef Habib, general director for classified advertisements, who acted as the exhibition's supervisor.
The event offered visitors a chance to see what the local information technology sector has to offer, its plans, its potential and current projects. Among them is Al-Ahram's recently inaugurated CD and DVD manufacturing plant which produces 20,000 CDs annually, plus the newly-launched Home Security Electronic System by the Al-Ahram Investments Company, Ghoneim told Al-Ahram Weekly.
"ACITEX has achieved great progress, realising the support given to the IT field by both the government and the society," Ghoneim said.
Also speaking to the Weekly, Nazif expressed enthusiasm for the industry's potential, saying that national CIT awareness had started to gain momentum.
The 11th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence Applications (ICAIA 2003) was held on the sidelines of the exhibition.
At ACITEX for the third time was Italy's SMAU Information Technology exhibition. Germany was also represented, promoting its CeBIT 2003 exhibit to be held in March in Hanover.
Education Minister Hussein Kamel Bahaaeddin told the Weekly that the slight rise in computer prices will not affect the number of computers for all project participants. "Economies go up and down but technology marches on," said Hussein Ghorab, general manager of Al-Wadi Computer Services. "We will continue to grow but not as much as we would have had the state of the economy been better," Ghorab said.
In some respects, this year will still be promising for communications and information technology in Egypt, despite the currency floatation, Nazif added.
Egypt's communications and information- technology (IT) industries managed 17 per cent growth last year despite a generally flagging local economy and the global shock that followed 11 September.
