The panel included the President Google EMEA Matt Brittin, Manager Google Egypt Hisham El Nazer, US Ambassador to Egypt H.E. Jonathan Cohen, Minister of Communications and Information Technology H.E Dr. Amr Talaat, and Vice Minister of Tourism and Antiquities Dr. Ghada Shalaby. In the past few years since 2015, Google has helped many people find jobs and grow their careers and businesses. Now, they are focused on how to accelerate economic recovery via technology. The pandemic pushed the world to embrace technology due to remote working and learning. Countries capable of adopting tech innovation are more likely to thrive economically in the ‘new world’ post-pandemic. “Entrepreneurship and youth lie at the heart of development in the digital economy. The pandemic has demonstrated the agility of policy makers and citizens to be able to adapt and that is the silver lining” said Al-Mashat. . Al-Mashat expressed that Egypt’s story is one of resilience as the economy is forecasted to grow in 2020, projected by several International Finance Institutions, with initiatives taken related to youth, women, digitization and infrastructure. In July 2020, The Ministry of International Cooperation along with the National Council for Women and the World Economic Forum launched the “Closing the Gender Gap Accelerator” a national public-private collaboration model that allows governments and businesses to take decisive action to close economic gender gaps. The accelerator aims to hardwire gender parity in the future of work, advance more women into management and leadership positions with an element of digitalization to build for a more inclusive business environment. The Ministry’s Global Partnership Narrative with “People at the Core”, “Projects in Action” and “Purpose as the Driver” puts the UN 17 SDGs at the forefront, and innovation, youth and women come at the heart of all the goals. Minister Al Mashat expressed the importance of Egypt becoming the region’s entrepreneurial hub for its majority of young population, who are agile, adaptive, talented and innovative. She emphasized that the development of a solid, sustainable and inclusive entrepreneurship ecosystem that has a multiplier effect on jobs creation, leads to delivering a circular economy in the future. Egypt Ventures, an investment firm seeded by the Ministry of International Cooperation, established in 2017 supports and invests in startups from a diver range of sectors across Egypt including Fin-Tech , with a blended finance model that directs capital into accelerators, venture capital firms, and startups at the early and growth stages. Al Mashat added that robust financial services will be highly significant for individuals and enterprises, and accordingly, companies that provide digital financial services (FinTech) can take advantage of this situation and scale up to meet the rising demand. Al Mashat was featured in Talks at Google as well as the Google “She Can” video series, where she stressed on the importance of technology in unleashing new potential, transforming countries and their economies. COVID-19 pushed us to embrace digital transformation. For instance, Al-Mashat pointed out that considering Egypt’s size and the number of students, the thought of having fully online learning before the pandemic was something that would’ve needed a trial phase perhaps in one governorate at a time, but with the pandemic “people were pushed into hot water and we had to survive...As policy makers, there was no time to panic anyway, we had to deliver,” she said. The Minister of Communications and Information Technology H.E Dr. Amr Talaat asserted that technology was necessary during the pandemic and perhaps, “if there is one positive thing about the current crisis engulfing the world, it is concretizing further and further the importance of ICT and the role of technology in our lives,” Talaat said. In Egypt, he said, the government began building a digital society before the pandemic hit. “A digital society needs capacity building, investing in youth and encouraging them to gain specialization in ICT. It also needs entrepreneurship and embracing the challenges that come with. Thirdly, it needs a digital government,” Talaat said. Grow “Stronger” with Google, is a new initiative to support small businesses and individuals in Egypt and the Middle East and North Africa. It explores leveraging digital transformation for the Egyptian SME sector.