Cairo, Egypt (CNN) - The Egyptian government seeks to expand the data center and artificial intelligence industry, at a time when American-Chinese competition for digital infrastructure projects is increasing, amid Egyptian efforts to take advantage of its geographical location and the network of submarine cables that pass through it to attract new investments in a sector that requires large amounts of energy and advanced capabilities in communications and computing.
In the latest move, the Egyptian government discussed plans to establish an integrated zone for giant data centers and artificial intelligence with Heka Data and an American alliance of data center industry developers. The discussions covered the initial concept of the project, its size, and the stages of its implementation, in addition to investment and technological opportunities, job opportunities, and services related to cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and digital services.
This comes days after Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit to Egypt, which witnessed the signing of an Egyptian-Chinese memorandum of understanding for cooperation in information technology, with a focus on advanced technology, cloud computing, data centers, the data-based economy, and semiconductors.
Press reports reported in August that the Chinese company Huawei submitted an offer to build artificial intelligence data centers for the Egyptian government, which includes providing more than two thousand processors from the Ascend series, while Washington moved to discuss a competing offer with the participation of American companies, including NVIDIA, AMD, and Microsoft.
During a meeting held with Heka Data and an American alliance of data center industry developers, the Egyptian Minister of Communications and Information Technology, Engineer Raafat Hindi, said that his country is open to international partnerships with companies specialized in data centers and digital infrastructure, and seeks to benefit from global expertise and technologies, while welcoming qualitative investments that contribute to the transfer and localization of the latest technologies.
Hindi added that the expansion of data centers and artificial intelligence aims to build an integrated system capable of hosting and processing data and providing digital services, in a way that serves Egypt and the regional and international markets, supports the competitiveness of the economy and attracts more technological investments.
Data centers are facilities equipped to host and operate servers that store and process data and provide digital services around the clock, while artificial intelligence data centers represent a more specialized type of them, as they include high-density computing capabilities and specialized processors to train and operate artificial intelligence models, which makes them more in need of electricity, cooling, and high-capacity communication networks.
"strategic opportunity"
Former Assistant Minister of Communications and Information Technology, Engineer Khaled Sharif, said that Egypt has a strategic opportunity to host giant data centers, benefiting from its proximity to African and European markets, in addition to lower operating costs compared to some other markets.
Sherif believes that Egypt's openness to partnerships with the United States, China, and others gives it an opportunity to attract investments and technology from multiple parties, explaining that artificial intelligence data centers differ from traditional centers because of their reliance on huge units of servers and GPUs to train and operate artificial intelligence models, and the resulting greater needs for energy, cooling, and networking capabilities.
Sherif added, in exclusive statements to CNN Arabic, that Egypt can benefit from its location and the submarine cable network to connect data centers to foreign markets, which allows it to develop its role from a mere corridor for data movement to a base for hosting and processing it, so that the economic benefit is not limited to the passage of data through Egyptian territory.
He continued that the escalation of competition between the United States and China in the field of technology and data centers may push Washington to accelerate its investments in Egypt, especially with the expansion of Egyptian-Chinese cooperation in this field, considering that this gives Cairo an opportunity to benefit from the investments and technologies offered by both sides.
The International Communications Network supports this trend; According to data from the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, 21 international submarine cables pass through Egyptian lands and territorial waters, including 6 cables under construction. These cables transmit about 90% of data traffic between East and West. Egypt also includes 10 submarine cable landing stations and 11 international data paths, in addition to the implementation of the new fiber-optic “guides’ route” linking the Red Sea to the Mediterranean Sea.
"One of the most suitable locations"
Communications and information technology expert Mohamed Al-Harithi said that these components make Egypt one of the most suitable locations for establishing artificial intelligence data centers, given its location that makes it a crossroads for data movement, in addition to its possession of submarine cable networks and land paths necessary for data transfer.
Al-Harithi explained, in exclusive statements to CNN Arabic, that artificial intelligence data centers need greater processing capabilities and a greater number of servers, in addition to high Internet capacities, large amounts of electricity, and advanced cooling systems, which makes their requirements different from traditional data centers, adding that some existing data centers in Egypt may need to develop their infrastructure in order to be able to accommodate advanced artificial intelligence applications.
Al Harithi said that expanding this type of center is not just about adding servers, but rather requires an integrated system of energy, communications, cooling, and processing capabilities, as saving energy represents one of the most prominent challenges facing the expansion of the data center industry, especially artificial intelligence centers that operate at high loads and around the clock.
The Ministries of Electricity, Renewable Energy, Communications, Information Technology, Investment, and Foreign Trade previously announced in June the preparation of a unified national strategy for the data center and cloud computing industry, including identifying available locations and renewable energy sources, especially solar and wind energy, and the readiness of the infrastructure for the electricity, communications, and information technology sectors, in addition to incentives and facilitating procedures for international companies.
