The total stock of university graduates in Egypt is over 2.5 million (6% of population in the range of 10 years and above). Only a fraction of this number however are ICT technicians due to the presence of other engineering specializations such as construction engineering. In 1996, a specialized faculty of Computers and Information (FCI) was established by the Ministry of Higher Education as part of Cairo University (a public university) to enhance supply of ICT professionals in Egypt by providing computer and IT specialists. FCI includes 4 departments with 900 students currently enrolled. Students receive 4 years of study.
The average cost of training Egyptian labor to become world-class IT professionals has been estimated at $20,000/person. Thus, to reach the government's target of producing an annual 5000 IT professionals requires an estimated $100 million budget to be allocated to ICT training.
As a result, the MCIT has largely involved the private sector and multinational corporations (MNCs) to work together to produce 5000-6000 highly professional ICT labors for the market annually in a five-year period through various strategic alliances and miscellaneous programs. Professional training programs have been arranged with several MNCs namely Cisco, Ericsson, Lucent, Nortel, Qualcomm, ICL, IBM, Microsoft and Oracle, in addition to the local Orascom and the Arab Academy for Sciences, Technology and Maritime Transport. Strategic alliances with MNCs are on a 50-50% cost-sharing basis with the Ministry.
Also, professional training for university graduates has been taking place since 1993 with the establishment of the Information Technology Institute (ITI) by the Information and Decision Support Center (IDSC), the technical arm of the government, which offers a training duration of 6-9 months to supply the market with professional software developers, Geographic Information Systems (GIS) developers, Computer Networking, multimedia, VLSI Design and Embedded Systems, computer instructors, executive secretaries, information analysts, computer operators and staff of technical bureau of ministers and governors. In July 2001, the ITI witnessed the graduation of 1,633 IT professional graduates in various fields.
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