January 8, 2007

U.S. Ambassador Francis Ricciardone recognizes Microsoft representatives in Egypt Mrs. Ghada Khalifa, CSR Manager and Mr. Karim Ramadan General Manager in the presence of Dr. Tarek Kamel, Egyptian Minister of Information and Communication

Ambassador: Thank you very much Karim, Mr. Minister, thank you for honoring us on this occasion. We are here to support a high foreign policy priority of the United States Government, promotion of American corporate social responsibility, or CSR, as it is being called now in industry in the United States of America. No American company is a prouder example of what we mean by CSR than Microsoft. One of the ways the U.S. Department of State encourages businesses to attain a high standard of civic engagement is through the Secretary of State's annual award recognizing the top American companies in the world who have achieved exceptional, exemplary results in the countries where they are doing business.

Every year American embassies all around the world nominate American companies working in the host countries for the Secretary of State's American Cooporate Enterprise Excellence Award. For last year, we in the American Embassy in Cairo nominated Microsoft Egypt out of some 250 American companies operating here, for the worldwide competition. There are great American companies throughout Egypt that we have nominated in past years, such as Coca Cola and many others. This year, I am very proud to say that the Secretary of State and the panel selected Microsoft Egypt as among the finalists. As a corporation, Microsoft is very proud to set high standards, not only in its own work goals and development of its own people, but also in serving the communities in which is located. Here in Egypt, for example, among the reasons that we in the Embassy nominated you and you were selected as a finalist are for the many reasons I will list now. By the way, I have a list here because it is just too much to remember.

Since 2004 Microsoft-trained teachers have worked with 52 mentally challenged children in Egypt every month - 52 a month, each month, since 2004, at Egypt's first internet learning center for children with special needs. And, of course, teachers are using Microsoft technology and Microsoft-provided equipment as they do that.

Microsoft Egypt worked with the Ministry of Social Affairs to improve the monitoring of orphanages and childcare facilities all around Egypt through a web portal that brings together information about all these services. This has helped in raising funds for these facilities to increase social awareness and to engage volunteers to help care for these children throughout Egypt.
Under the "Technology Access and Enablement" initiative, Microsoft Egypt is using technology and education to empower Egypt's young and rural populations. They are also working with the Future Generation Foundation Scholarship program to produce a hundred and fifty Microsoft certified professionals every year.

Microsoft is working with Minister Kamel and his team in the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology Club to help deliver IT training to thousands in rural and impoverished areas in the Nile Delta and Upper Egypt. Through the Siwa Oasis project, Microsoft is providing a remote desert community with access to IT and ICT tools, and is repeating this model in four other remote communities.

You are supporting small and medium enterprises throughout Egypt. We all know the value of high-growth, high job-production sectors and initiatives in any country, but especially in Egypt. President Mubarak is emphasizing job-creation and this is a sector that's now taking off. What you are providing through information technology and training for small businesspeople and entrepreneurship is helping with this job-creation program.

I understand in the past two years you have trained over 650 unemployed young people in underprivileged areas like Manshiat Nasr, Ein Shams, Ein Helwan, and other areas in small business practices and IT. You have partnered with the industrial modernization center in the ministry once again on small business IT solutions, providing 3,500 small businesses with specialized technology in business training. You are also partnering with the ministry in a home and student PC initiative which is really booming. The minister tells me it has reached 250,000 homes in the past three years. You have made Egypt a center for your regional operations, a real corporate vote of confidence to this wonderful country, its people and its future. And in making it a regional center, you have also chosen it as site for applied innovation. We were just discussing before coming in that your vice president will be visiting in a couple of weeks to take a look at those operations. I was asking why you chose Egypt, and the fact is that Microsoft worldwide has found that Egypt has some of the best brains, some of the best thinkers throughout the Arab region and Africa. Right here in this country is some of the best human potential to compete, to make new products, to take basic applied research and turn it into ideas that will serve not just Egyptians but people around the world.

As the American Ambassador in this country I am very confident about Egypt and about Egyptian-American relations. I am very optimistic about this country and its potential, what you are accomplishing and what you have accomplished, Mr. Minister, in such a short time. So, I congratulate Microsoft Egypt, and I congratulate all of you. The reason we nominated you, the reason you have been selected, is because of what the employees of Microsoft Egypt are doing, for your own volunteer efforts, your own contributions. Working with orphanages, working with children, working with youth, your train-the-trainer programs, all these things are wonderful and they make us very proud that Microsoft is American company and operating here in Egypt. Alf Mabrouk, congratulations, keep up the great work and it is my pleasure to present you with this small mark of recognition from the Secretary of State of the United States. Thank you.

Question: What resources are available from the embassy to companies like ours in the area of CSR?

Ambassador: It is a corporate phenomenon and most of the recourses come from the companies themselves, but we do have something called, "Global Development Partnerships." In the case of Microsoft, you haven't asked us to do this, but sometimes we work through USAID to do some sort of matching grant, and we use our expertise in the field of development - in all the different fields, such as in microfinance, rural power, off-grid power, internet learning, etc. We work with a host nation private company and American companies and we will bring all these pieces together in a specific area of economic development assistance. We often have the economic development expertise, depending on what the given company wants to specialize in. The United States Government is able to take "lessons learned" from, say, fighting AIDS in Africa and apply it to fighting AIDS in Southeast or Central Asia, for example. We are able to take lessons learned on microfinance from one country and spread it around the world just through the body of expertise we have through USAID, and we work with like-minded entities like the World Bank that have experts. Microsoft is one of those partners that also has a global reach, a company that has learned that when something works in Egypt, you can that in other places where you are located.

We do some of that sort of thing with companies that come to us. Some companies come to us and say, perhaps, we just got a corporate social responsibility officer and she would like to come to Egypt. Because they are just starting to locate here and are not sure what to do, we will take that officer, meet with her or him, we will see what AID does, we will talk about what other companies here are doing to see what they may able to do. Boeing is an example of a company that has just started doing that. They are making some grants in Egypt, they want to do more than just make money, they want to engage with Egyptian NGO's, the Government of Egypt and do things that have high impact and low overhead. I guess the short answer is that we have some expertise and we work as a kind of catalyst between the U.S. and local private sector and the host government. Finally, I should add that, sometimes, we can apply matching funds.

Thank you.