Egypt and ICTs: How ICTs bring national initiatives, global organizations and local companies together

The aim of the paper is to move beyond globalisation as a concept and explore processes of globalisation that are linked to ICTs, using Egypt as an example. The paper explores how ICTs have been linked to economic and social development by international agencies such as the UNDP and the World Bank. It focuses on the national initiatives of the Egyptian government to facilitate development through ICTs and shows the variety of agents – other governments, multinationals, international development agencies, new government agencies, local companies – necessary in these plans. We argue that ICT facilitated development has led to the formation of new, and more complex, networks of relations where ICTs act as a common point of interest and where the roles of these diverse actors are redefined in this process. The example of Oracle and the installation of an ERP system in an Egyptian company are used to illustrate these points.