The Director of the Information Systems Department of the Egyptian Armed Forces, Walid Adly Attia explained President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s directive to implement one of the largest strategic projects for protecting cultural heritage in the Middle East, the Cairo 24 news website reported on Tuesday.
In a meeting in el-Alamein, Sisi followed up on the implementation status of the project to archive and digitize Egypt’s radio and television heritage housed in the historic Maspero building, in cooperation with major international companies and relevant state entities.
The meeting coincided with the unveiling of the size of this archive, described as the largest and most important in the Arab region, comprising approximately one million audio and video tapes, totaling nearly 800,000 hours of content documenting the history of Egypt and Arab society over decades.
During his address at the Radio and Television Heritage Digitization Conference, Attia said: “The President has mandated that the digitization project be completed within two years. We have engaged leading companies specializing in digitization and utilized highly advanced equipment for the project.”
“In accordance with the President’s directives, artificial intelligence technologies will be employed to facilitate and enrich the process of adding metadata to the content. Furthermore, the building’s studios and information infrastructure will be upgraded through the establishment of a new building infrastructure.”
He concluded: “The content will be published on streaming platforms like Shahid and social media. We consider this a national project and are committed to completing it within two years, as per the President’s directives.”
