The World Youth Forum continued to be the talking heads’ primary focus on its penultimate day, while the EGP breaking the 16 / USD 1 barrier also earned some airtime. We have both stories in this morning’s Speed Round, below.

Talking point of the day: President Abdel Fattah El Sisi confirming that state agencies will start moving to the new administrative capital in mid-2020 was of particular interest to several of our nation’s talk show hosts, including Al Kahera Alaan’s Lamees El Hadidi (watch, runtime: 5:33), Masaa DMC’s Eman El Hosary (watch, runtime:1:49), and Min Masr’s Amr Khalil (watch, runtime: 4:04). All three hosts also took note of the president saying that the transition will rely on modern tech as part of Egypt’s focus on technological development and digitization.

World Bank’s Mohieldin talks regional economic performance and outlook, future of tech: World Bank Group Senior Vice President Mahmoud Mohieldin sat down for a chat with Lamees on the status and outlook of Egypt and the region’s economy. Mohieldin noted that, while Egypt is outperforming its regional peers by a wide margin, the Arab region as a whole is underperforming when looking at key metrics such as GDP growth, unemployment and poverty rates, inflation, and distribution of wealth. The key to improving this position, he said, is to pursue sustainable development in basic services such as education, which also allows citizens to provide social and economic value. Mohieldin also told Lamees that, with the advent of new technologies, governments and citizens alike would be well advised to invest in digital literacy, as new classes of wealth and poverty will be formed based on those who are best prepared for the fast development of technology (watch, runtime: 41:32).

Lamees also talked about the appreciation of the EGP against the USD, which we cover in this morning’s Speed Round, below.