SIS: A six-language portal to communicate with Africa

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Sun, 10 Feb 2019 - 10:33 GMT

BY

Sun, 10 Feb 2019 - 10:33 GMT

SIS headquarters - File photo

SIS headquarters - File photo

CAIRO, Feb 10 (MENA) - Egypt’s State Information Service (SIS) launched Sunday morning a comprehensive portal in six languages; Arabic, English, French, Swahili and Hausa, while the version in the Amharic Language will be launched within days.

During the launch of the portal on Sunday morning, Diaa Rashwan, the head of SIS, said that this portal is the largest serious attempt to communicate with the African peoples in their local languages, in addition to the European languages spread in the African continent and the Arabic language.

Rashwan said that this portal africa.sis.gov.eg comes within the framework of a wide media activity carried out by the State Information Service as an official Egyptian media body in order to achieve the objectives of the State in strengthening Egypt's relations with the African peoples, especially while President Abdel Fattah E Sisi is assuming the chairmanship of the African Union (AU).

He stressed that this media activity will continue and develop and will not be limited to the period of Egypt's chairmanship of the African Union.

SIS chairman said that the portal addresses the Egyptian people at first to be aware of the African countries, Egypt's relations with them, their news, cultures, symbols, literature, economies, histories and civilizations. It also addresses all African peoples in languages that they can read thus helping every user to find all the news of his/her country, reports and news about the Egyptian relations with his/her country and the collective action among
other African countries throughout the year. It will also provide all these news, reports and information to internet users around the world in the six languages of the portal.

Rashwan elucidated that each one of the six versions of the portal contains about (10) similar categories that will be updated daily, the most important of which is Egypt category, which provides Egypt’s basic information such as location, region, language, population, currency, national holiday, flag, national anthem, capital, major cities and major tourist attractions. The category also provides an overview of the history of Egypt that includes Egypt’s history, information on the political system, and daily news about Egypt in all fields.

Another category is “Africa Today” that contains the most important news on Africa as a whole and every country of the African countries.

In addition to the “Press Review” which displays daily headlines of newspapers in different African countries in their languages as well as the most important articles and reports.

Another category entitled "Egypt and Africa" deals with Egypt's relations with African countries in all their aspects and all the daily news on this matter.

Then another category “African countries” presents a background information on African States as well as the most important news of each country on a daily basis (internally divided into 54 sub-sections each for an African country).

The portal also includes the “Library” which presents the most important studies and periodicals related to Africa and the most important scientific research and studies issued on African affairs in Egypt and abroad.

As well as the “Agenda” that includes the most important events in the African continent according to the date.

“African figures” presents the African dignitaries, introduction of each character and the biography (political, literary, cultural, sports, etc) of such immortal political African symbols such as Mandela, Gamal Abdel Nasser and the founding fathers of the Renaissance of Africa.

In the field of literature, we have international writer Wole Soyinka and our writer Naguib Mahfouz and in sports, George Waya, Mahmoud El Khatib, Mohamed Salah, and others in order to introduce the new generations of the continent to these great African personalities and to memorize their names.

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