British Egyptian Business Association (BEBA) held their second ICT conference under the theme of “Digital assets & Artificial Intelligence: Shaping the Future”, discussing the technological boom and its effects on asset management.

“We are delighted to hold our second IT conference, hosting key speakers in the Egyptian industry, who joined us to explore the potential of technological development and the means to utilize it in benefit of the Egyptian economic growth,” stated Khaled Nosseir, Chairman of BEBA in his opening speech during the conference.

The conference was attended by Hala El Said, Minister of Planning, Monitoring and Administrative Reform, in addition to a number of high-profile government officials, Presidents and CEOs of major banking and IT companies, as well as Fintech sector representatives from major UK corporates that operate in Egypt.

The conference hosted two plenary sessions discussing regulations of digital assets, Artificial Intelligence (AI) value in data, and its benefit in digital asset management.

Hala El Said, Minister of Planning, Monitoring and Administrative Reform, talked about digital transformation plans that are in line with Egypt’s vision 2030 to enhance digital skills and encourage innovation in Egypt. She pointed out that the Ministry of Planning is now seeking to automate a major database, connecting all government entities together. El Said added that 55 governmental entities have been successfully connected, with an aim to connect 100 entities by June 2020. She further added that 245 of government services have been automated, provided with fully-trained and well-oriented customer service to help citizens, in an attempt to reduce corruption.

“We are now working on automating the count of birth and death rates across Egypt, which in turn provides a constantly updated calculation of population,” stated El Said.

Akef El Maghraby, Vice Chairman of Banque Misr, stated that banking transactions should adapt with the latest developments of the era, and make maximum use of them to provide the best possible experience. He mentioned that Banque Misr ‘s customer service features a chat-bot option automatically solving customer inquiries, which is also a way to extract value from data through artificial intelligence.

El Maghraby pointed out that potential threats which may occur as a result of AI should be taken into consideration; as it replaces many jobs but also creates new valuable jobs.

Golestan (Sally) Radwan, Advisor to the Minister of AI, added that 60 million new jobs will be created by 2020, but we must take into account the effects that AI technology may have on the nature of job selection. Radwan mentioned that working on improving and upskilling the workers to shift from a job to another has a limit, and can change the global economic system.

“Ensuring the successful establishment of AI technologies can be achieved through educating the public and reassuring them about what is expected of AI, what is real and what is not. In addition, being aware of the educational organization by teaching students about AI. We have to provide experts with the necessary information and mechanisms to build this system.“ she added.

The conference sessions further discussed means of sales optimization, marketing interactions and client services, as well as predictive market modeling based on instantaneous processing of data.