The leading technology park in Egypt: Smart Village in Cairo

Interview with Adel Danish, Chairman and CEO of Smart Villages

What is your assessment of the current business environment in Egypt?

Business environments have their ups and downs but right now I think things are getting better. We are extremely optimistic about the situation now.

How do you evaluate the commercial segment of real estate?

The commercial segment is doing really well right now. Lots of companies are coming back to Egypt and investing. Even during the last three years, we at Smart Villages have been experiencing continuous growth in our business. The demand for this segment is increasing by double digits every year.

Smart Villages Development and Management Company was incorporated on August 2001 as a PPP investment with a mandate to establish and manage a branded chain of technology clusters and business parks. Could you briefly describe your mission in Egypt?

The way the company started was very simple; it started as a Public Private Partnership (PPP). It is 20% owned by the government and 80% owned by the private sector. The whole idea was to create a synergy between the companies that would be located in the Smart Village, thus it is not just office space, but it is more of a technology park. You will find research centres, education institutes, incubators for small companies and we also have a financial district including the Cairo Stock Exchange as well as many Financial Institutions and banks.

What distinguishes you from other developers of office spaces or other technology parks? What innovation do you bring?

I believe we are the only technology park in Egypt, we do not know of any other technology parks here like this one. When we compare ourselves to other business parks in the region that are specialised in IT or telecoms like ours, we have extra components such as the incubators, the financial sector and the educational facilities. All of this makes us a bit different from the rest. We also offer a complete ecosystem for businesses to prosper. We have a school for the children of the employees working in Smart Village. We have a sports club with a football field, four tennis courts, a swimming pool and a spa. We have a large conference centre. These are the things that make Smart Village so special compared to other places. This environment attracted over 60,000 of the most talented, ambitious and smart employees; these employees are the real value of the Smart Village.

You serve as a kind of business base for many companies. Who in fact resides in the Smart Village? What is the portfolio of the community?

It is mainly the IT, telecommunications and the financial sectors. We have all the big players in IT such as IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, HP, Dell as well as the big four telecommunications operators: Telecom Egypt, Vodafone, Orange/Mobinil and Etisalat. There is also the financial sector, where we have the Cairo Stock Exchange and the Egyptian Financial Supervisory Authority (EFSA) as well as all of the major banks.

What is the occupancy at the moment? When do you expect completion?

We always try to keep occupancy at a level of around 70 to 80%. That way we are always sure to have space available for any new tenants. This is our target and this is our occupancy right now.

Apart from this village, will we see new Smart Villages in the future?

We are currently studying the possibility of having a Smart Village in East of Cairo as well as in Damietta. We are consulting several countries to establish Technology parks that would evolve into Smart Villages as we also franchise the name.

Is there any particular segment of clients or companies that you are trying to attract?

Mainly the IT, telecoms and financial sectors. Probably other sectors will follow in the future like pharmaceutical and petroleum sectors.

What is your vision for the company?

We want to try to replicate the model that we have here right now in other places in Egypt and also outside of Egypt, mainly in North Africa, sub-Saharan Africa and in some countries in the Arab world like Jordan and Tunisia.

We have already started on this by providing some consulting jobs and some property and facility management.

What is your personal vision for Egypt?

I think we are on the right track; things are moving forward, security is getting back to normal, people are motivated while being aware of the major hurdles we are facing.

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