January 2000

Update: Egypt

All the relevant information was retrieved mainly from the Internet, and secondly from IDSC and the American University at Cairo. The information presented is accurate as from the date it was collected and reported.

Little has changed in the web site environment in Egypt over the past 3 months. The admittedly minor changes recorded concerned the educational sector, with the number of school web sites rising from 14 to 17, and with the number of library web sites increasing from last quarter’s 91 to 95 at present.

Overall, a total of 161 web sites have been identified so far, 10.56% of which belong to the education sector (schools and higher education), 7.4% to the national ministries, 16.8% to the regional and local authorities (such as municipal authorities), 62.1% to museums and libraries, and 3.1% to the hospitals and healthcare sector.

The majority of the sites belong to libraries and museums. Health, libraries, culture, tourism, governorates, etc. form an integral part of Egypt’s "information highway", an initiative undertaken by the Information Decision and Support Center (IDSC).

"Egypt Information Highway" is one of the major projects developed by the Information and Decision Support Center and it comprises a number of sub-sites that serve in the following domains: health, government, culture, tourism, etc. This project plays an important role in linking the people to the main services and useful information of the country.

Electronic commerce is already claiming a significant role in Egypt, this role being continuously enhanced. Over 200,000 Internet users in Egypt are presently exposed to e-commerce; in addition, 52 private Internet service providers operate in the country. The Cainet annual conference series focuses on Internet related issues, drawing more than 1200 attendees on average. A variety of topics are discussed in the conference of which e-commerce is one. In addition, the e-commerce committee of ISE presented a white paper on establishing e-commerce in Egypt. Currently, the committee has formulated a draft for an Egyptian e-commerce initiative and has presented its results at Cainet ’99, where they were discussed with key players from both the private and government sectors.

Note : * = Percentage is less than 0.05.

Sources :

• Internet
• IDSC
• American University at Cairo