Egypt Prepares a National Data Centre Strategy as Technology Growth Tops 19 Percent
Egypt is preparing a national data centre strategy for launch by the end of this year, the Minister of Communications and Information Technology, Rafat Hindy, said in remarks published by his ministry on 22 September, alongside a second phase of the national artificial intelligence strategy and work on a third edition of the national cybersecurity strategy. The minister repeated that the communications and information technology sector grew more than 19 percent in fiscal year 2025/2026, the first time it has done so, supported by 24.3 percent in the fourth quarter of that year.
The growth figures are not new
The 24.3 percent quarterly rate was given on 7 September at the opening of the sixth Tech Invest Egypt conference, where the minister described it as the highest rate in the sector’s history and said outsourcing exports reached 5.1 billion dollars at the end of 2025, with the ministry targeting 8 billion dollars by 2028. Both accounts are ministerial statements rather than statistical releases, and neither puts a figure on the sector’s share of gross domestic product.
| Item | Figure as stated |
|---|---|
| Growth, fourth quarter of fiscal 2025/2026 | 24.3% |
| Growth, fiscal year 2025/2026 | above 19%, described as a first |
| Outsourcing exports, end 2025 | 5.1bn dollars |
| Outsourcing export target, 2028 | 8bn dollars |
| Share of gross domestic product | not stated in either account |
Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, 22 September 2026, and the State Information Service account of the minister’s remarks of 7 September 2026.
What the ministry says it is building
The 22 September account, given at the eighth edition of the FDC Summit running from 22 to 24 September, set out 400 government services on the Digital Egypt platform by 2030 and 24 Digital Egypt creativity centres in 20 governorates. The second phase of the artificial intelligence strategy aims by 2030 to support more than 250 startups, train more than 30,000 specialists and bring 36 percent of citizens to use tools supported by artificial intelligence, with a national large language model named Karnak developed by Egyptian engineers at the applied innovation centre. The second edition of the national cybersecurity strategy, covering 2023 to 2027, is being implemented while executive work has begun on a third.
Why it matters: a data centre strategy is the part of this programme with a balance sheet attached, because capacity has to be financed, powered and cooled before any of the artificial intelligence targets can run on it. The outsourcing export figure is the clearest measure of what the sector earns abroad, and the 2028 target implies it must rise by more than half from the end of 2025 level, on our calculation.
Outlook: the data centre strategy is due before the end of the year, which is the next dated commitment in the programme. The growth rates were given in speeches, so the quarterly national accounts for the period are where they can be checked against a statistical source, and neither account gives the sector’s share of output.
Sources: Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, State Information Service.
