Egypt: Land of Pyramids, the Sphinx…and Outsourcing?
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Image via WikipediaIndia’s tech boom has inspired other developing nations to promote themselves as outsourcing destinations. The latest to try to cash in: Egypt.
Tarek El-Sadany, a government official in charge of helping to grow the country’s information-technology industry, says that the country is well positioned to do these tasks—literally. Egypt is only two hours off of Greenwich Mean Time, so daytime there corresponds nicely with the European workday. For U.S. companies committed to outsourcing, Egypt can be a hop between the U.S. and India.
Another benefit, according to El-Sadany, is that the weekend in Egypt is observed on Thursday and Friday. People typically work on Saturday and Sunday so companies won’t have to pay extra for those shifts—or get stuck with second class workers—as they might in other countries.
Egypt graduates more than 30,000 engineering students a year, and thousands more fluent in English, French and German. “Egypt from a cultural view is in the center of the world,” says El-Sadany.
Excerpted from an article by Ben Worthen for The Wall Street Journal
Egypt awarded 2008 Outsourcing Destination
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