Tech in Africa
Egypt’s Information Technology Industry Development Agency has announced an open call for applications for promoting the exports of Egyptian IT Outsourcing SMEs to the EU market program offered through the Centre for the Promotion of Imports (CBI) of the Netherlands’ Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
This 3-year program looks to support Egypt’s ITO SMEs in their export journey to the EU by offering technical assistance through a practical business exporting project. The program further equips Egyptian companies with the skills and knowledge required to enter the European market.
SMEs that benefit will get 3 years of coaching provided by international and local experts and assisted to create an international marketing strategy. The program will further offer guidance, advice, and coaching to the companies on suitable certification for their market entry strategies. This will help the company’s overall Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in addition to providing marketing orientation support.
CBI’s export coaching program is among a set of actions that help achieve our ambitious strategy aiming at tripling the size of Egypt’s BPO and ITO exports over the next five years, said ITIDA’s CEO Amr Mahfouz. The program mainly targets small or medium-sized enterprises and women-led companies across Egypt offering Information Technology Outsourcing (ITO) services and are interested in improved market positions in the EU.
CBI has some requirements for companies applying among them to be 50% or more locally owned, have a local management structure, employ between 10 to 250 FTEs. The SME applicants should have been active in the ITO industry within the past 3 to 4 years and have no joint venture with companies based in non-developing countries, and no licensing commitments prohibiting or limiting the export of products to the EU. The top management of companies applying must be in a position to communicate in English. The application deadline has been set at  31 January 2022.
If CBI is to finance the project costs the participants will only bear the costs of travel expenses for direct European market entry activities – among them an investment in product offers, employees, and certification.
More details at https://www.cbi.eu/projects/it-outsourcing-egypt
