I browsed the
CCIEs worldwide list and found some interesting numbers, it sheds some light on the distribution of the top networking talent in the field geographically.
First the totals (last updated 2/5/2010):
| Total of Worldwide CCIEs | 20864 |
| Total of Routing and Switching CCIEs | 17774 |
| Total of Security CCIEs | 2393 |
| Total of Service Provider CCIEs | 1752 |
| Total of Storage Networking CCIEs | 150 |
| Total of Voice CCIEs | 1180 |
| Total of Wireless CCIEs | 20 |
Then the country-by country numbers:
| USA | 5494 |
| P.R. China | 3619 |
| Japan | 1142 |
| United Kingdom | 1052 |
| Korea | 1033 |
Naturally, USA is the largest country to have certified CCIEs (being that it is the home country of Cisco and the largest market for its products), but the interesting number is that Asia holds the largest number of CCIEs collectively (given the population numbers), the really surprising omission in this list is India (which comes in the seventh place), it gives it a more realistic perspective of top tech-related talent distribution in developed countries (with China holding about 5 times the CCIEs compared to India).
Then the Arab World
| Saudi Arabia | 193 |
| United Arab Emirates | 169 |
| Egypt | 110 |
| Israel | 65 |
| Kuwait | 47 |
| Qatar | 34 |
| Jordan | 33 |
| Lebanon | 28 |
| Bahrain | 13 |
| Oman | 10 |
| Algeria | 6 |
| Morocco | 6 |
| Tunisia | 4 |
| Libyan Arab Jamahiriya | 2 |
| Palestinian Territory | 2 |
| Yemen | 2 |
Here we find that Saudi Arabia holds the largest number of CCIEs, followed by UAE then Egypt, this shows that Egypt (unlike public press from the Government) is not the largest pool of high-tech talent in the Middle East (and its not Israel either, shown here for comparison purposes), but Saudi Arabia and UAE, this might not be true in all of the high-tech segments, but it indicates that the efforts excreted by the Governmental initiatives in Egypt are not that effective in creating a pool of high-end expertise in the field.
Egypt is not even the largest country in Africa to hold CCIEs, South Africa (with 122 CCIEs) is higher in this list.
