The Birth of Egypt's Information Society

This paper demonstrates the experience of Egypt in introducing and diffusing the concepts of Internet and the Information Highway. The paper reflects the emergence of the information, communication and computing tools and techniques as a strong vehicle for business, social and economic development. Living in an era of continuous changes with respect to different socio-economic perspectives affecting our lives, a vital issue arises reflecting the need to spread the awareness of information technology and its use in managing business and socio-economic development and change. In that respect, this paper describes the role played by Egypt through a government initiative supported by the private sector in the build-up of an information infrastructure of the various sectors in the economy using state-of-the-art information technology tools and techniques while accommodating to newly emerging issues such as Internet. The focus of the paper will be on the building blocks of the Internet and the information highway at large and its implications on the business development and the growth of the business exposure across national boundaries targeting the world as a global village. The paper demonstrates how such an ambitious objective required massive build-up of human, information and technological infrastructure and growing throughout the different development phases from information islands through infrastructure and infostructure and into the information society. Finally, the paper highlights critical success factors for the use of Internet technology in business development and widening the global market presence through notions of infrastructure build-up, realizing business inter-connectivity, establishing national, regional and international links, investing in people, building an on-line society, formulating an on-line business environment, which would yield to the build-up of a smart society that is triggered by the information technology and capable of competing and leap frog into the 21st century.