More than 150 Albanian talents in the field of technology have turned their visions into real businesses and today proudly present impressive products.
Prime Minister Edi Rama held a meeting with Albanian start-ups, which today number 2,000 registered with a passport across the country, while 4,500 companies operate in the IT sector with around 15,000 employees. These figures were presented during the meeting by the Delina Ibrahimaj, Minister of State for Entrepreneurship and Business Climate, who emphasized that the export of IT services amounts to about 200 million euros.
Among the young participants were also the winners of the Startup Grant 2024 and 86 new startups who received the news today that they are winners and will be funded this year through the Startup Grant 2025 call.
Prime Minister Edi Rama: Greetings and thank you very much. I really liked the applause, because it was very warm, and it is true that we have 89 winners of the program here today, but it is also true that we are aware that the program needs to be expanded further.
Meanwhile, just yesterday I saw an analytical audit of how the e-Albania platform has changed the lives of Albanians, and three facts remain in my mind. The first is that the platform has saved Albanians a total of 620 million euros that they would otherwise have spent on services over the years. The analysis is very interesting and detailed, including savings on fuel, distances, and so on. The second fact that stuck with me was that 75 million sheets of paper were saved, which is no small amount. But the third, which is the most significant in terms of the impact of digital technology, is the time saved – imagine the amount of time saved, 25,000 trips around the world.
This is the great surprise and blessing of technology for countries like ours, where in terms of contact with technology and receiving the services it offers, we have the chance to make historic leaps that we could never have made without technology. For example, in such a short time we would never have managed to create a public administration capable of providing the services of e-Albania with the same transparency, speed and accuracy. Impossible!
Meanwhile, until the advent of the power of digital technology, progress was linear. Now we are in the age of exponential progress. If in the era of linear progress the transition from one typewriter to another took several years, then access to this product for the poorest took much longer, so much so that the less developed and poorer countries ended up with typewriters that others had discarded.
It’s the same with computers in the beginning. For example, I remember when I became Minister of Culture. In the Ministry of Culture in 1998, there was an office dedicated to typing, and all documents went there to be typed, either handwritten or dictated by those who prepared the document. There were three women who typed, and there were three very worn-out typewriters. The letter “ë” was added with internal modifications because the original typewriter didn’t have it. The arrow that hit the paper made holes, and when you took the document, it was porous because it was filled with the holes of the “ë”. I had a fresh memory of an exhibition I did in Germany, where a cultural center had just received computers from the Deutsche Bank, which was taking them out of service and donating them to cultural centers in Germany that didn’t have them.
I also got a typewriter and I wrote a letter to the director of Deutsche Bank with these typewriter strokes and told him, “This letter comes to you from the Ministry of Culture of Albania. If possible, could you also give us some computers?” Then the German embassy contacted me, brought me here, and that letter, I don’t know where it is now, but at least at that time it ended up framed on the wall of the director of Deutsche Bank as a work of art, because it was unimaginable.
Today, it’s a completely different world. We may be behind in many things, but in some areas, thanks to technology, we are way ahead of others. It’s no coincidence that a country like Estonia is way ahead of a country like Germany, even though when Estonia started on this path it couldn’t even be compared to Germany, let alone any other country in the EU. We see this now not only in e-Albania, but also in the negotiations.
We now have an artificial intelligence model that handles the transfer of laws and all 250,000 EU texts, for which other countries ahead of us employed an army of translators and writers. Meanwhile, our model does in a few minutes what translators and editors used to do. For Croatia, this task alone took 7 years. Meanwhile, we are doing it at a very high speed, and within 5-6 months we will have it done in its entirety. We will have it in Albanian, with very high quality, and the model is improving every day.
Similarly, in public procurement, we are working with Microsoft on an innovative model for public procurement without human involvement, which actually, or more precisely, conducts the public procurement process without human involvement until the result is announced. Then the relevant commission certifies the result and, of course, makes the decision. And in the end, the responsibility for signing contracts and public spending lies with people, not yet artificial intelligence. But it is an ambitious project. A few days ago, a workshop was held at AKSHI with representatives from 16 countries working in this direction.
They all participated to some extent. What we are trying to do with Microsoft is to create a model that can do everything. We’re hoping to have it ready by the end of 2026. Meanwhile, in a short time – I don’t know exactly when, because the work is still in progress – e-Albania will take a step to a new level. The Diella system, which appears and speaks, will perform the entire service. It will no longer be necessary for users entering e-Albania to follow Diella and click through options; instead, this will be done on request. For example, users will say to Diella, “I need this letter, my name is [name],” and Diella, the digital assistant, will take care of everything.
Having said all that, I think we have great potential here with you and others like you who can help us evolve our governance processes using our data. Because at the end of the day, you know a thousand times better than I do, because I am learning on the job, that the more data we have, the more raw material we have to create models that can then facilitate our processes or take us to horizons we never imagined before.
We also talked earlier about the “Ecole 42” that will soon open in the Pyramid – an excellent school for digital technology that is actually outside the traditional system, with no age requirement, where anyone can join after going through their own selection process. This school is one of the main nuclei of the digital revolution in France, which is already at the forefront of these developments.
This is from me, and thank you for your patience. Delina wanted me to give the news that here are 89 subjects that will receive support from the government, but in fact Delina really deserves, not only to say this, but also my gratitude in your eyes for the very useful work she has done to advance this relationship between the government and startups, which I hope and wish to strengthen and expand even further. And don’t forget that now in Albania we have the “Durana” Technology Park, which is a park that is exactly for you and for all those like you, inside and outside, for technology products, and it has an extraordinarily favorable incentive system. And very soon, I think by next year, I hope we will also have the building in Vlora, right in the center of Vlora, which has exceptional spaces. It’s fantastic for high-tech and it will work as a park. So those who will have space, those who will have offices, and those who will develop technology products there will have a tax system and an incentive system that is completely different than outside the perimeter of the building.
So keep that in mind, and I very much hope that by then you will have made new developments, because the speed of development here is staggering. I also remember the first conversation I had with Mira Murati, we were talking about speed and she told me something that was frightening. She said, “If it took a year to go from iPhone 12 to 13, to go from one thing to another, now that artificial intelligence has come in, it will take a day. What is new in the morning will be old by the evening. That’s how fast the pace of change will be.”
Thank you very much, and fortunate are those like you who, while transforming at such a speed, are also transforming yourselves gradually, because if you are involved in painting, it can take six months for one painting, and you are six months older, but you have made one painting. Whereas in 6 months you can do so many things, and you just have 6 months of experience, not older, because you have time to use these words.
Thank you very much!
Prime Minister Edi Rama: This “dream” is a big word to say that “our dream is to be in Durana”. There it is, go and get in, what kind of dream is that? I said, “The dream is to go to a planet that we haven’t discovered yet. Thank you for the kind words, which in this case belong to Delina, I repeat, but there is one thing I forgot to say, which is my great obsession: keep in mind that with membership in the European Union, the support for start-ups and technology grows exponentially. In fact, from the European Union over these years, all years combined, we have received support for various programs, including everything together, which is a little more than 1 billion euros, and support for technology is something that has only recently entered and is modest, whereas with entry into the European Union, 1 billion or so euros every year, and in that 1 billion or so euros that is every year, keep in mind that unlike the previous 1 billion, where the majority were loans, in the 1 billion every year, the majority are grants. So the change is not small, but today we are at 90% loans and 10% grants for EU support. With the entry into the European Union, we move to 90% grants and 10% loans. Loans are good, of course, they have low interest rates, but they are loans.
That is why it is very important that we continue the process of negotiations without interruption, without fluctuations, confusion, etc., because a real, current opportunity has been created, which has never been the case since the last wave of enlargement, and in fact, since the entry of Croatia, there has never been a real opportunity to enter the European Union. Now it is real, and we are at the door, we just have to finish the negotiations, and for start-ups, for all of your world, it will be an exponential change in our capacities for support, but also in your capacities to benefit from the European Union, because once we enter the EU, all of you will be eligible for all the funds that the European Union has for technology. So, if the European Union has a program for start-ups, beyond the money that it gives to each country for technology, there are different programs that are programs of Brussels. Today you cannot access them because you are not a member of the European Start-up Community. As soon as this changes, you will be like everyone else and you will be able to apply like any other European citizen. This is a fundamental change.