PMFORUM Breaking News

Ahmed Saleh Mokhtar, PMP, MSE, a Certified Consulting Engineer and senior Project Management consultant and trainer based in Cairo, has been named an International Correspondent in Egypt for PMForum and PM World Today. Mr. Mokhtar is also the Consultancy Director for Promastar.

Mr. Mokhtar is a Senior Project Management Consultant and certified Project Management Professional (PMP) with a 23-year service record providing project management consultancy and training to public and private sector organizations in Egypt, Germany, Saudi Arabia and the UA Emirates.

He is currently, and since 2004, the Consultancy Director at Promastar, responsible for all project management consulting projects starting from PM maturity assessment, proposal preparation, resource allocation, setup and development of PM methodology, directing and managing the project execution and closing the projects. He had a main role in building the PMO in Saudi Telecom, Municipality of Jeddah, Al-Zakary Real-estate in Riyadh, Alssad Contracting in Jeddah and other organizations. His previous experience includes working as Director of Project Management Division in EPM Consultancy in Cairo from 1998-2003. Between 1989 and 1998 he worked in the project management division of Architectural Office Faulenbach in Germany. From 1983 to 1989 he was working as project engineer in Egypt.

Ahmed is thoroughly experienced in complete project management including project management control systems, project/program management office (PMO) setup and development, computerized project control software, claims analysis and prevention, risk analysis and management (contingency planning), and business development.

Ahmed has provided more than 100 PMP training courses in the region, and has been a visiting lecturer for project management in the Graduate School for Management, Arab Academy for Science and Technology, and at the 6 October University in Egypt. He has provided PM training courses with well known organizations in Egypt and the Middle East such as the American University in Cairo (AUC), AMIDEAST, Promastar, PMI-MENA-Chapter, RITI, Huawei Telecom Company, USA Corps of Engineers in Cairo, Washington Group, Saudi Telecom Company, Alcatel, Boeing-funded PMP-training, Dubai Electricity and Water Authority, and the Municipality of Jeddah.

Mr. Mokhtar gained his B. Sc. Degree in Engineering 1983 from Assuit University in Egypt and a Master degree in Construction Project Management 1991 from Hochschule Hidesheim/Holzminden University in Germany. In 1999, He received his PMP certification which has been renewed twice till 2008.

He is a Charter member of the Egyptian Project Management Society (EPMS). He is also a current member of the Project Management Institute (PMI), USA, and served from 2005 to 2007 as member of Board of Directors and VP of PMI’s Middle East / North Africa (PMI-MENA) Chapter. He is also a Member of the Management Engineering Society (MES), the local national member of the International Project Management Association (IPMA), Switzerland.

Ahmed Mohktar has been selected as a member of several national committees in Egypt, including the committee for issuing a new code of practice for construction project management in Egypt (2007-2008) and the ministerial committee for evaluating and negotiating the Greater Cairo Waste Treatment Project - with a budget of one billion USD.

According to Wikepedia, Cairo is the capital and largest city in Egypt and Africa's most populous city. Cairo was founded by the Fatimid caliphs as a royal enclosure in 969 A.D., ruled by the Ottomans from 1517 to 1798, and briefly occupied by Napoleon. Muhammad Ali of Egypt made Cairo the capital of his independent empire from 1805 to 1882, after which the British took control until Egypt attained independence in 1952. Cairo has a population of about 7.7 million people, with a metropolitan area population of about 17.3 million people. It is the sixteenth most populous metropolitan area in the world and the most populous in Africa.

Today, Greater Cairo combines historic towns and modern districts in one of the most historic cities in the world. Famous historic features include the Pyramids, Saladin's Citadel, the Virgin Mary's Tree, the Sphinx, and Heliopolis, to Al-Azhar, the Mosque of Amr ibn al-A'as, Saqqara, the Hanging Church, and the Cairo Tower. It is the Capital of Egypt and its history is intertwined with that of the country.

Cairo is located on the banks and islands of the Nile River in the north of Egypt, immediately south of the point where the river leaves its desert-bound valley and breaks into two branches into the low-lying Nile Delta region. Cairo is the center of Egypt, as it has been almost since its founding. 20% of all Egyptians live there. The majority of the nation's commerce is generated there, or passes through the city. The great majority of publishing houses and media outlets and nearly all film studios are there, as are half of the nation's hospitals and universities. This has fueled rapid construction in the city—one building in five is less than 15 years old.
This astonishing growth until recently surged well ahead of city services. Homes, roads, electricity, telephone and sewer services were all in short supply.

Egypt, officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country in North Africa. The Sinai Peninsula is part of northeastern Egypt, which also forms a land bridge to Asia. Covering an area of about 1,001,450 square kilometers (386,660 sq mi), Egypt borders Libya to the west, Sudan to the south and the Gaza Strip and Israel to the east. The northern coast borders the Mediterranean Sea; the eastern coast borders the Red Sea.

Egypt is one of the most populous countries in Africa and the Middle East. The great majority of its estimated 80,300,000 people live near the banks of the Nile River in an area of about 40,000 square kilometers (15,000 sq mi), where the only arable agricultural land is found. The large areas of the Sahara Desert are sparsely inhabited. About half of Egypt's residents live in urban areas, with the majority spread across the densely-populated centres of greater Cairo, Alexandria and other major cities in the Nile Delta.

Egypt is famous for its ancient civilizations and some of the world's most famous monuments, including the Giza pyramid complex and its Great Sphinx (pictured at right below). The southern city of Luxor contains numerous ancient artifacts, such as the Karnak Temple and the Valley of the Kings. Egypt is widely regarded as an important political and cultural nation of the Middle East.

The Egyptian Nile Valley is home to one of the oldest cultures in the world, spanning three thousand years of continuous history. On 18 June 1953, the Egyptian Republic was formed, with General Muhammad Naguib as the first President of the Republic. Naguib was forced to resign in 1954 by Gamal Abdel Nasser, who assumed power as President and declared the full independence of Egypt from the United Kingdom on June 18, 1956. President Mohamed Hosni Mubarak has been the President of the Republic since October 14, 1981, following the assassination of former-President Mohammed Anwar El-Sadat. Mubarak is currently serving his fifth term in office. He is the leader of the ruling National Democratic Party.

Egypt is the world's 38th-largest country, twice the size of France, four times the size of the UK, and more than half the size of the US state of Alaska. Nevertheless, due to the aridity of Egypt's climate, population centres are concentrated along the narrow Nile Valley and Delta, meaning approximately 99% of the population uses only about 5.5% of the total land area.

Egypt's economy depends mainly on agriculture, media, petroleum exports, and tourism; there are also more than three million Egyptians working abroad, mainly in Saudi Arabia, the Persian Gulf and Europe. The completion of the Aswan High Dam in 1971 and the resultant Lake Nasser have altered the time-honored place of the Nile River in the agriculture and ecology of Egypt. A rapidly-growing population, limited arable land, and dependence on the Nile all continue to overtax resources and stress the economy.

The government has struggled to prepare the economy for the new millennium through economic reform and massive investments in communications and physical infrastructure. Egypt has been receiving U.S. foreign aid (since 1979, an average of $2.2 billion per year) and is the third-largest recipient of such funds from the United States following the Iraq war. Its main revenues however come from tourism as well as traffic that goes through the Suez Canal.

Egypt has a developed energy market based on coal, oil, natural gas, and hydro power. Substantial coal deposits are in the north-east Sinai, and are mined at the rate of about 600,000 tonnes (590,000 LT/660,000 ST) per year. Oil and gas are produced in the western desert regions, the Gulf of Suez and the Nile Delta. Egypt has huge reserves of gas, estimated at over 1,100,000 cubic meters (39,000,000 cu ft) in the 1990s, and LNG is exported to many countries.

Economic conditions have improved considerably after adoption of more liberal economic policies by the government, as well as increased revenues from tourism and a booming stock market. In its annual report, the IMF has rated Egypt as one of the top countries in the world undertaking economic reforms. Some major economic reforms taken by the new government since 2003 include a dramatic slashing of customs and tariffs. A new taxation law implemented in 2005 decreased corporate taxes from 40% to the current 20%, resulting in a stated 100% increase in tax revenue by the year 2006.

FDI (Foreign Direct Investment) into Egypt has increased considerably in the past few years due to the recent economic liberalization measures taken by minister of investment Mahmoud Mohieddin, exceeding $6 billion in 2006. Egypt is slated to overcome South Africa as the highest earner of FDI on the African continent in 2007. Information above about Egypt and Cairo, courtesy of Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia, at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egypt.

Ahmed Mokhtar is based in Cairo, and can be contacted at asaleh@promastar.com

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