IDC: Egypt is 4th Highest Technology Spender in ME

By: Taarek Refaat

CAIRO, Dec. 1 (SEE)- Nagia El-Emary, Country Manager of the International Data Corporation (IDC) said on Saturday that Egypt is the fourth highest Middle Eastern country in terms of expenditure on Information and Communications Technology (ICT) after Saudi Arabia, the UAE and South Africa.

This came on the sidelines of the Huawei North Africa Innovation Day.

El-Emary added that the cost of global digital transformation will exceed $ 1.7 trillion by the end of this year, up by 42 percent from 2017.

"Statistics show that 50% of the countries Gross Domestic Product (GDP) will become digitalized by 2020," she noted adding that spending on digital transformation in the Middle East and North Africa is expected to reach $ 38 billion by the year 2021 up from $ 27 billion this year.

For his part, Hamadoun Toure, the Executive Director of Smart Africa asserted that governments and institutions should play a prominent role in shifting societies towards the use of technology.

Toure believes that Africa demands around $ 300 billion in investments for digital transformation.