Dr. Tarek El-Sadany, Senior Advisor to the Minister of Communications & Information Technology of Egypt for Technology Policies, wants to expand Egypt’s IT industry. He says that Egypt is a great choice for both European countries and the United States: Egypt is GMT +2, so it’s convenient for Europe, and Egypt is closer than India to the United States.  And did you know that Egypt doesn’t observe the traditional “weekend” that Americans do? Instead, Egyptian workers stay home on Thursday and Friday, which means finding people to staff call centers on the weekend is not a problem.

For a long time, Egypt wasn’t even on the radar for IT outsourcing. But recently, it made Gartner’s top 30 list of countries best suited to providing outsourcing services.  Egypt is marketing itself aggressively, and big US companies are starting to sit up and take notice: Intel has announced it will open offices in Egypt.