V IE WPOIN TS
MIDDLE EAST WATCH
A RISING STAR
Egypt emerges as a project management force in the Middle East.
BY RANIA AL-MAGHRABY, ITIL, PMP
gypt is a country with
Edeep roots, excellent location and diverse resources
that enable its bright
present and future. And, as it is
in many locations around the
world, project management is
growing in Egypt, both on the
individual practitioner level and
on the organizational level.
As of December 2008, the
number of Project Management
Professional (PMP)SM certificants
in Egypt is approximately
1,400—with a long waiting list of
exam takers, according to the PMI
MENA Chapter in Cairo, Egypt.
The number of trainees and credential holders is growing
rapidly as awareness of the positive impacts of applying
project management practices grows. The PMP®
credential is recognized, valued and trusted in the Egyptian
marketplace. But the standard qualification alone isn’t
enough, making experience and practice essential.
At the organizational level, a number of local and
multinational organizations are launching or considering a
project management office to act as a central point for
orchestrating project management activities in a managed
and controlled way. Xceed, a major Egyptian outsourcing
provider, has established a programs office department
aimed at using “project management and supportive functions to deliver state-of-the-art projects to its customers,”
says Mohamed Ossama, PMP, programs director at the
company.
The Egyptian government also is keen to follow project
management practices in its local administrative and
development projects. Thanks to a huge e-government
project, for example, users can tap into an online portal to
apply for and receive governmental and administrative
services.
Not all sectors are at the same project management
maturity level in Egypt, though. IT and construction, for
example, are more mature than other sectors, such as manufacturing. Compared to other countries in the region,
Egypt falls in the middle
range, after the Arabian Gulf
countries, where more industrial applications mandate the
practice of professional project
management.
Foreign Influx
One of the key catalysts for
improving project management
practices in Egypt is the increasing foreign investment in the
country.
“Project management is essential in Egypt because of several
reasons. The first is the interest of
foreign corporations in Egypt to
introduce a base for their operations,” says El Namaki,
Ph.D., professor, founder and former dean of Maastricht
School of Management, the Netherlands, and currently
president of the Drucker Society for Gulf States, Dubai,
United Arab Emirates.
The Egyptian marketplace holds great promise for
foreign investment, especially in the outsourcing field,
perhaps most evident in business process and call center
outsourcing. In October 2008, Egypt was named the
outsourcing destination of the year by the British
National Outsourcing Association.
The growing list of IT multinationals investing
in Egypt—including Vodafone, Wipro, Satyam,
Teleperformance, IBM, Microsoft, SQS and Valeo—is
another testament to the country’s unwavering efforts to
establish itself as a modern business location.
The bottom line is that Egypt is a very strong player
and a rising star in the project management arena. By
increasing awareness among the community, the profession will improve even more in the country. PM
Rania Al-Maghraby, ITIL, PMP, is an inde-
pendent project manager from Egypt in the
IT field. She is the founder and current
president of itSMF Egypt Chapter. You can
e-mail her at: rania@islamway.net.
