CAIRO (youregypt.com) - Bill Gates, chairman of Microsoft Corp., visited Egypt in the past week for the first time. Gates took part in the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and decided to visit Egypt on his way back to USA.

Bill Gates, world richest man, visits Egypt

Gates met with President Mubarak on January 25th to discuss business cooperation with the Egyptian government. He praised the Egyptian IT development and pledged to support it.
"Egypt is candidate to lead the region in IT field," Gates told Al-Ahram newspaper on 31 January.

Microsoft's chairman took part in launching Egypt's E-government project, sponsored by the Egyptian Ministry of Communications and Information. The portal is intended to ease governmental services like citizens' acquisition of official certificates and payments of bills
According to Gates, Microsoft will provide learning facilities, technical advice and training to teachers and students over the next 5 years as part of long-term agreements with the Egyptian ministry of Education.

Gates took the opportunity to address conferences held in Cairo on technology cooperation between Middle Eastern states and on software developing.

It is noteworthy to mention that Bill Gates' fortune is estimated at $40.7 billion from his company founded in 1975. This makes him topping the list of richest people in the globe as according to Forbes magazine last year.

CAIRO (youregypt.com) - Egyptian Minister of tourism, Mamdouh El-Beltagui, announced last month that Egypt had received more than 6 million tourists in 2003. El-Beltagui said the figure is the highest in the history of Egyptian tourism industry.

The minister said Italy, Germany, Russia, UK and France top the list of visitors.

The new figure proves Egypt was not at all affected by the Middle East tension resulted from the war on Iraqi regime and the continued unrest in the Palestinian territories.

CAIRO (youregypt.com) - Fifa inspectors has ended last week their visit to Egypt to assess the country's ability to host the World Cup in 2010.

Logo of Egypt's bid to the World Cup

Egypt competes to host the event alongside with Morocco, South Africa, Libya and Tunisia. The Fifa has decided to grant the event to the African continent to hold it for the first time in history.

Inspectors have met with Egyptian officials and toured 9 candidate cities in Egypt.

It is worth mentioning that Egypt is the last country to be toured by the Fifa inspectors before they present their report to the Fifa president in next March.
The final decision would be made on May 15th by the Fifa's executive committee.
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The official website of Egypt World Cup 2010 Bid in on www.egypt-2010.com