Since its inception, Skolkovo, the giant tech center under completion on the outskirts of Moscow, has been seeking to develop relations with a range of countries across Western Europe, North and South America, Asia and Africa. Most recently, initatives have been announced in connection with two Eastern-Mediterranean countries.
In late February, the Skolkovo Foundation signed a memorandum of understanding with the Cyprus Investment Promotion Agency (Invest Cyprus). The MoU aims to facilitate joint projects in the fields of energy efficiency, information and communication technologies, biomed and industrial technologies in particular. Skolkovo will provide consulting services for Cypriot players seeking to enter the Russian market, and vice versa. Skolkovo will also help companies open an office inside its innovation city, reports the Skolkovo Foundation.
This past month also saw Egyptian Ambassador to Russia Ihab Nasr visiting Skolkovo. The ambassador believes there’s a significant cooperation potential with the Russian tech hub in such fields as energy, space, ICT and smart city technologies. “We are building a new administrative capital,” Nasr said, offering an example of what this potential cooperation could apply to.
As reported by the Skolkovo Foundation, Nasr also said that the Egyptian government is currently building 10 technoparks and a huge smart village in which such technologies are in demand. “There are also plenty of companies in Egypt interested in cooperating with Russian enterprises, both in terms of hardware and software,” he added.
According to Mikhail Tykuchinsky, development director within Skolkovo’s energy efficiency cluster, Skolkovo energy startups are interested in cooperating with Egypt, not only for the Egyptian market itself, but also as a gateway to the Gulf region. Six Skolkovo startups took part in the Egypt Petroleum Show in Cairo earlier this month, Tykuchinsky noted, and many of Skolkovo’s energy startups have offices in Gulf countries such as Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.
Meanwhile, visitors to the Skolkovo innovation city last week got a sneak preview of an exhibition opening this week at Moscow’s Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center devoted to Israeli tech innovations, reports the Skolkovo Foundation.
The exhibition, titled “Impossible is inevitable. Ideas that change the world” opens on March 15 at the Jewish Museum, and showcases Israeli tech inventions in areas ranging from remote diagnostics and wearable devices to robot-companions for elderly people and the use of augmented reality in medical procedures such as surgery.
