Egypt’s telecom ministry wins World Summit on the Information Society 2016 award

Egypt’s The Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT) won the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) 2016 prize, granted by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU).

The award was for “Training and Qualifying People with Disabilities (PwDs) for Better Job Opportunities” project. It is within the framework of ITU efforts to support significant projects based on ICT tools to drive the social and economic growth.

The “Training and Qualifying People with Disabilities (PwDs) for Better Job Opportunities” project is within the framework of the strategy implemented by MCIT to support and enable the participation of PwDs, through providing a training grant on “Computer Driving for PwDs”, and a training grant for “better job opportunities” in which PwDs are trained on skills related to specific jobs, to get those jobs after passing the training successfully.

The ICT Minister’s Advisor for Social Responsibility and Services Abeer Shakweer received the award during WSIS awards ceremony, organized within the activities of WSIS 2016, held on May 2 – 6 in Geneva, Switzerland.

Shakweer is due to participate in a high-level workshop on how to create a conducive environment for effective integration of ICTs. This is in addition to the participation of the ITU President Hollen Zaw and other experts from different countries.

Shakweer will also participate in a session on “Inclusive Society” which tackles the use of ICT tools to integrate PwDs into communities, reviewing MCIT experience in this area.

The projects presented for this year’s prize were about 400 projects from around the world, evaluated by a specialist team of experts. More than 300 success stories related to ICTs were included as well. 18 projects specialized in 18 different areas have won awards.

WSIS awards is a tribute to excellence in implementing projects and initiatives that promote achieving WSIS objectives, contributing to the achievement of UN sustainable development goals through employing ICTs.

MCIT managed to achieve many successes in the field of adapting ICT tools to enable PwDs in a short period of time.