Ex-e& group CEO Hatem Dowidar takes stake in Cairo AI startup Tactful

Former Etisalat CEO puts money into a local AI startup: Hatem Dowidar, who ran Abu Dhabi telecoms group Etisalat until the end of March, has taken a direct stake in the Cairo-born customer experience startup Tactful AI through an extension of its pre-Series A round, the company said in a statement (pdf). Terms were not disclosed. Tactful is targeting a Series A in 2027 and says it will release details on a new platform in the coming months.

REFRESHER- The original USD 1 mn round, co-led by Foras AI and M Empire, closed in February. It came weeks before Dowidar stepped down following six years as group CEO and a prior 16-year career at Vodafone, including a stint running Vodafone Egypt.

About the asset: Tactful, founded in 2016 and counting Elaraby Group, Raneen, 2B, Lucky One, Erada Finance, and Simplex as clients, says annual recurring revenue is up 11.7x since January 2025 and monthly conversations handled on the platform up 32x.

A track to Taba

The Transport Ministry is pressing contractors to speed up work on the railway connecting El Ferdan, East Port Said, Bir El Abd, Arish, and Taba, which represents the spine of its Arish–Taba logistics corridor, according to a ministry statement. Minister Kamel El Wazir called on national companies and Sinai-based specialist contractors to join the build and told the 11 firms executing the stretch to work around the clock. The first 100 km, El Ferdan to Bir El Abd, opened last year; Arish-Al Hasana (85 km) and Al Hasana-Taba (173 km) are still to come, and the ministry disclosed no cost or delivery timeline for them.

IN CONTEXT- El Wazir also flagged the industrial-logistics zone planned behind Arish Port, which is to hold 1k factories. On power, the Electricity Ministry puts Sinai grid investment at EGP 57 bn, covering 30 transformer substations, 8k km of circuits, overhead lines and underground cables across voltage levels, and 15k medium- and low-voltage poles, according to a separate statement. Transport opened about 1.9k feddans of Sinai logistics-zone land — 1.5k in North Sinai and 400 in South — to local and foreign investors in April.

Low-orbit ambitions

Local connectivity provider EgyptSat Telecom plans to introduce Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite internet to the domestic market by late 2027, aiming to offer high speeds at competitive prices to areas with no terrestrial or mobile coverage, Al Mal reports. No LEO service is licensed in Egypt today (Starlink remains unapproved and kits are geofenced), so EgyptSat would be the first domestic provider to offer one, subject to approval from the National Telecommunications Regulatory Authority.

SOUND SMART- Geostationary satellites sit about 35.7k km away, so a signal takes roughly 600 milliseconds round-trip. Meanwhile, LEO satellites orbit at 500-1.2k km, cutting that to about 20-50 milliseconds and delivering speeds closer to terrestrial fiber.

IN CONTEXT- EgyptSat isn’t starting from scratch. In July, it rolled out what it calls Egypt’s first domestically designed and manufactured mobile satellite station, built to link cell towers to satellite backhaul and plug 5G gaps off-grid. The LEO plan fits a broader push to replace imported telecom equipment with locally made equipment and sell cheaper broadband to sites beyond the grid.