An Irish company that provides computer training certification has won a significant deal with the Egyptian state education sector, which could be worth €50 million over the next five years.

The contract has been won by the ECDL Foundation, which is the global governing body for the European Computer Driving Licence and has been headquartered in Dublin since 1997.

The initial contract with the Egyptian Ministry for Communications and Information Technology (MCIT), which is being signed in Egypt today, is worth €5 million and will see one million Egyptian students and government employees taking the qualification.

MCIT has plans to train up to 10 million people over the next five years - five million in the schools system, two to three million in state universities and one to two million government employees. The Egyptian government has identified IT skills and English language capabilities as essential for attracting inward investment.

The ECDL will provide access to its curriculum and also certify the students who pass the examinations. According to Damien O'Sullivan, CEO of the ECDL Foundation, the contract is the biggest single deal that it has won.

Although the ECDL Foundation has been actively marketing in the region for the last two years, the deal came about as a direct result of its participation in a trade mission to the Middle East earlier this year organised by Enterprise Ireland.

Conor Fahy, Enterprise Ireland's director in the region, said Irish companies were enjoying considerable success in the Middle East whose "markets are booming, fuelled by the reinvestment of oil revenues within the region, robust construction activity and the vast government surpluses being ploughed back into education and infrastructure projects."