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Changing Arab minds
Dispatch
Filed by Tarek Atia
March 21, 2001
Ready, set, internet!
Go straight to the dispatch from the conference's first day...
Chatting with visionaries
Read interviews with Virginia Secretary of Technology Donald Upson, former Apple CEO John Sculley, and Arabia.com founder Khaldoon Tabaza.
Themed 'Accessing New Horizons', the central issue of the Egypt's International Economic Forum's 'Information Technology and Telecommunications in the Arab World' conference was a challenge: As Arabs, when it comes to the all-encompassing future of IT, are you going to be reactive or proactive?
The conference's answer was an agreement to establish an Arab IT forum to coordinate on IT policy between Arab states. The forum would consist of government officials and private sector leaders in the field.
An Arab IT fund would also be established to invest in the industry. The fund would be paid for by a 0.25 per cent allotment of each country's GDP. These two suggestions will be presented to the Arab Summit in Amman on 27-28 March, 2001.
On his part Foreign Minister Amr Moussa says Egypt is proposing the establishment of a Council of Ministers of Information and Telecommunication Technology in the Arab world. The minister – soon to be Secretary-General of the Arab League -- called IT one of the driving forces of more Arab collective work.
At dinner on the conference's opening night, Moussa pointed out that "there are those who fear that conceding to the global tide will make us vulnerable and that we may eventually be overwhelmed by foreign cultures and norms, thus gradually eroding our identity. These fears are justified and should be addressed. But, on the other hand, there are others who warn of the risk of marginalization and loss of competitiveness, if we do not join the global drive in this sector. These warnings are serious and should be heeded."
Moussa's lucid, straight-forward speech was a succinct summary of the Arab world's situation vis-à-vis IT and the Internet.
But making the transition to Egypt becoming "a significant participant in the knowledge age," as Minister of Communications and Information Technology Ahmed Nazif put it in his inaugural remarks, would have to somehow overcome the problem summed up by Economy Minister Youssef Boutros Ghali, in his concluding remarks, when he presented his so-called heretic's view of IT:
It's not just about gathering and processing information, Ghali said, it's about the recipients of that information as well. Will they understand the information and be able to use it? You have to look into the mind of the recipient of the information -- whether they process it properly, accept it and tolerate it. Only then would there be a revolution. As such, IT, in changing the way people think, is just the catalyst for such a revolution
Ready, set, internet!
Go straight to the dispatch from the conference's first day...
Chatting with visionaries
Read interviews with Virginia Secretary of Technology Donald Upson, former Apple CEO John Sculley, and Arabia.com founder Khaldoon Tabaza.
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