The Minister of Communication and Information Technology, Egypt – Amr Talaat, has recently shared the scope of budding technology of ‘Metaverse’ through a recent competition called “Metaverse Innovation Hackathon”. He concisely referred to all the potential benefits and aspects of virtual technology that could shape the future.
The term (Metaverse) refers to a virtual world environment that uses AR and VR technology to create a realistic and interactive experience. Instead of watching different events on the screen of various electronic devices, you can live all your online activities, such as shopping, meeting friends, attending a concert, or visiting anywhere you want.
It’s about transforming the Internet into a 3D world where spatial borders disappear and allow individuals to move anywhere around the globe freely and anytime.
Metaverse technology is expected to change the shape of business in the future and change the nature of humans in our modern world as a result of digital technologies that depend on virtual reality mechanisms that will transport individuals to worlds and horizons beyond their limits and potential.
Countries of the world are racing to rely on 5G technologies to keep up with the metaverse technologies, work on improving technological infrastructure to keep up with future technology and pump more investments into improving technological infrastructure, with a market value expected to reach $5 trillion by 2030, which emphasizes the importance of investing in Metaverse.
The Egyptian state is working to adopt a clear vision to deal with the Metaverse and the digital world in general, realizing with certainty that investment opportunities in it can be transferred to another position that will benefit the Egyptian economy and sustainable development in general.
In order for the Egyptian state to keep up with these technological advances, the Center for Technological Innovation and Entrepreneurship launched by the IT Industry Development Organization “Metaverse Innovation Hackathon”, a competition held by Egypt’s Digital Creativity Centres and Digital Manufacturing Factors, on the initiative of Egypt that makes electronics.
The Hackathon aims to inspire Egyptian youth in various governorates and encourage them to cooperate, think creatively in Metaverse applications and harness technologies to find high potential and effective solutions for communication and remote work to contribute to accelerating and supporting digital transformation processes.
This is in addition to enhancing the role of Egyptian universities as hubs for creativity and entrepreneurship based on innovation, the discovery of ideas, and finding and helping them grow young innovative talents.
The Hackathon includes a series of competitions and interactive activities carried out in a hybrid system that combines online events and interactive activities in 10 different governorates, including seven governorates where Egypt’s digital creativity centres are located in government universities, namely Mansoura, Menoufiya, Minya, Sohag, Qana, Aswan, and Suez Channel in Ismailia, as well as digital manufacturing factories With Egypt’s initiative. It manufactures electronics in three governorates, Cairo, Alexandria and Assiut.
The competition aims to promote the use of various technologies that contribute to the construction and development of the “metaverse” world by supporting the structure of many applications and solutions directly, such as GameFi-SocialFi-NFT or indirectly, such as DAO/DAC-GPT and other technologies, including AR, mixed reality, VR, and tri-model charge Dimensions, virtual objects, computer visuals, non-replaceable codes, processing of natural languages, wearable sensory devices, and machine interaction with humans, artificial intelligence, Internet of Things, and machine learning.
The marathon is aimed at faculty members, IT researchers, student innovators, graduates, and IT entrepreneurs.
The Hackathon provides well-equipped workplaces for all participating teams to hold meetings, communication, workshops, orientation, mentorship, project presentations and product launches, among other cooperative activities in all the previously mentioned provinces.
The Authority has allocated prizes of a total value of 750 thousand pounds, distributed equally to three winning teams in each geographical location referred to. This is in addition to opportunities to access accelerator programs, business incubators, and access consulting, marketing and business development services offered by the Authority and its affiliates.
Hackathons also prioritize enrolling in the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship programs and supporting them in their journey to turn their ideas into startups that can compete and impose themselves in different markets and domains.
Participating teams are evaluated according to the degree of innovation and modernization of the idea, beneficiary categories, target or expected market size, potential profitability, the expected impact on local, national or global levels, the team, technical and administrative capacity, and the maturity and development reached in Model One.
In addition to those efforts, the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology participated in the first meeting of the specialized team on Metaverse held on March 8-9 following the first forum on Metaverse adoption organized by the International Telecommunications Union in cooperation with the National Cyber Security Authority on March 7 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Two members have been appointed from the Ministry of Communications in the metaverse specialist team.
The International Telecommunications Union had set up a specialized team of experts to work on setting international technical standards for the Metaverse. The specialized team provides ground-breaking technical measures that can help create a core ecosystem for technology and businesses that encourage market entry, innovation and cost efficiency in a sector that some industry analysts expect to grow to approximately $800 billion by 2024.
The specialized metaverse team also created 8 task groups tasked with implementing a range of tasks, including the Public Task Force, and working groups on applications, services, infrastructure, integration between virtual, real-world, interoperability, security, data and personal information protection, economic and organizational aspects, competition, sustainability, accessibility and inclusiveness.
Metaverse is a reality that will completely change the nature of the world connectively, socially, behavioural and economically. Countries that can’t handle this reality and be aware of its challenges, and exploit opportunity will be too late.
The Egyptian state, in light of the global economic challenges it is facing, with qualified human capabilities and great potential, has an excellent opportunity to use virtual reality (Metaverse) technologies to make growth leaps in several sectors, including education, health and tourism, and to find unconventional qualitative solutions to increase investment in different industries and work on providing radical solutions To many economic and social problems and create a smarter and more efficient economy.
Technology is creating an unlimited number of opportunities to achieve sustainable development goals. It enables societies to evolve and grow by relying heavily on modern technologies like the Metaverse, AI, IO, robotics, 3D printing, blockchain, augmented reality, VR, and other future technologies.
