Cisco, ITIDA Team Up for Digital Apps & Game Development Initiative

PRESS RELEASE -- Egypt’s Minister of Communications and Information Technology, Amr Talaat and Cisco CEO and Chairman, Chuck Robbins, witnessed the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding addendum (MoU) between Cisco, the worldwide technology leader, and the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology.

Under the MoU signed during the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, Cisco will collaborate with the Information Technology Industry Development Agency (ITIDA) in deploying Egypt’s presidential initiative: Africa Innovation in Digital Applications & Game Development Initiative (AAL).

The agreement was signed by representatives from Cisco and ITIDA during the Mobile World Congress 2019 event in Barcelona.

This initiative is part of Cisco’s Country Digital Acceleration (CDA) program for Egypt that aims in part at accelerating MCIT’s talent development and capacity building strategies.

With the involvement of its Networking Academy program, Cisco’s NetAcad, Cisco will work closely with ITIDA to jointly promote the AAL initiative in a number of African States, with the objective to include countries such as South Africa, Nigeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Algeria, Senegal, Cameroon, Uganda, Kenya, Ethiopia and Mauritius.

Qualified learners from each participating country will form separate teams to work on developing solutions and ideas for 3 months in the two identified tracks of App and Game development, which will be followed by teams’ selection and ongoing mentorship in the projects development phase.

During the training phase, ITIDA’s Technology Innovation and Entrepreneurship Center (TIEC) will liaise with Cisco to avail and help in the delivery of three training courses including Programming Essentials in C++, Programming Essentials in Python, and Entrepreneurship with certifications in addition to other learning tracks provided by Coursera or edX availed on the AAL website (in audit mode).

The training and capacity-building phase will be followed by launching the 1st African Cup in Gaming and App development where the qualified teams will receive ongoing mentorship and business consulting support in the projects development phase.

Egypt will be the host of the cup’s final competition phase where the finalist teams will be evaluated by a joint evaluation committee from ITIDA, TIEC, and Cisco. Selected top teams will have the chance to create booming startups, and receive financial rewards.

The available training tracks are free (no registration or participation fee) and open to the African higher-education graduates (starting form year 2006 or after) and the undergraduates but limited to those who will finish study in two years.

For more information on the competition, including registration, please visit the website: http://techleaders.eg/aal/about/.