By: Saber Mohamed - Mohamed Al-Khouly
EgyptInnovate won the ITU Innovation Challenges 2020 competition in the Ecosystem Best Practice Challenge category.
The "EgyptInnovate" platform is one of the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology projects that the Information Technology Industry Development Agency (ITIDA) supervises through the Technology Innovation and Entrepreneurship Center.
The Egyptian project won the award for the tools provided by the "Egypt Creativity" platform to the entrepreneurship community to stimulate innovation, learning and communication opportunities for innovators and entrepreneurs through a digital platform available in Arabic and English, in addition to an interactive map of the active entities in the innovation and entrepreneurship community in Egypt.
Projects from 26 countries, including Egypt, will be submitted to the competition. Entrepreneurs, innovators, owners of small and medium enterprises, policy makers, and system builders in the countries participating in the competition will compete.
The winners are expected to participate in the virtual global innovation forum organized by the International Telecommunication Union in early October, which will last for four days. They will have the opportunity to attend capacity building workshops and pitch their proposals to a global audience of professionals, experts, and networks of mentors and decision makers.
The competition included 3 challenge categories, which are the Digital Change-Maker Challenge, for creative people with ideas that seek to create a digital impact in their societies, as well as the Ecosystem Best Practice Challenge, for best-practice ecosystem builders. That fosters an enabling environment for creators, innovators and entrepreneurs in their communities. Finally, the Women in Technology Challenge, for girls and women who are creative in the field of technology, and startups that have digital projects that create a direct impact for women in their societies.
The "Egypt Creativity" platform aims to introduce innovators and entrepreneurs in Egypt, promote them, display their innovations and projects locally and internationally, connect those interested in innovation and entrepreneurship in Egypt and create cooperative societies among them, and be a single point of access for innovators, enabling them to learn about the latest news, best practices and activities. Relevant ways to get guidance and support.
The platform was also built on open source software, whereby all the data on it is available for free to everyone, as one of the platform's competitive advantages over others. The number of registered users on the platform this year exceeded 50,000, and the number of entities registered on the EgyptInnovate map reached more than 1,000 entities, destinations and emerging companies
