Egypt mission: Partner Mapping and Programme Development has explored the possibility for SPARK to support and establish Youth Entrepreneurship Program, SME development and/or Education program in Egypt. Conducted in 2022 -2023.
What does it take to design a youth entrepreneurship program for a country of more than 100 million people, where over half the population is under 35? That was the challenge BRULZ took on when SPARK Netherlands, an international development organisation with decades of experience in youth entrepreneurship, asked us to assess whether and how it should enter Egypt.
SPARK’s model works at four levels: skill-up, match-up, start-up and scale-up, helping young people and women gain market-relevant skills, connect to jobs, launch businesses and grow them. Before committing to a new country, SPARK needed a clear-eyed view of the terrain: who is already active, where the gaps are, and which local partners could carry a programme. Our assignment was to map that terrain and turn it into concrete, fundable programme directions.
A country of enormous needs, and enormous energy
In January 2023, BRULZ consultant Vasko Karangeleski travelled to Cairo for an intensive field mission, combining desk research with interviews across the whole spectrum of the ecosystem: government agencies such as MSMEDA, ITIDA, TIEC and GAFI, universities including the American University in Cairo and Nile University, donors like the EU Delegation, USAID, UN Women and the Islamic Development Bank, and the accelerators, angel networks and event platforms that give the Egyptian startup scene its remarkable buzz.
The numbers tell a story of both pressure and promise. Youth unemployment hovers around 30 percent, and unemployment among young women is far higher than among young men. At the same time, entrepreneurship enjoys almost unmatched popular support: three out of four Egyptians see it as a desirable career, and in 2022 Egypt recorded 160 startup deals, the highest number in the MENA region, with 517 million dollars in startup financing. During our mission, fintech platform MNT-Halan closed a 400 million dollar round, reaching a one billion dollar valuation.
The catch: everything happens in Cairo & Alexandria
Looking closer, though, and the picture becomes uneven. More than 93 percent of Egypt’s tech startups come from Cairo. Of the country’s 141 coworking spaces, the overwhelming majority sit in the capital; incubators barely exist in Upper Egypt. Support programmes are mostly delivered in English in a country where that excludes much of the population outside the big cities. And while employers are eager to hire, 78 percent of companies struggle to find talent with the right skills, with business and soft skills the biggest gap even among the 50,000 tech graduates Egypt produces every year.
In other words: the ecosystem looks crowded from a distance, but the crowd is standing in one place. For an organisation like SPARK, whose strength is working in underserved and fragile areas, that is not a barrier. It is exactly the opportunity.
Four directions for impact
Our assessment distilled the findings into four intervention areas that can stand alone or combine into a larger Egypt program:
- Serve the Underserved: establish youth and women entrepreneurship support in areas beyond Cairo, such as Asyut, Minya and Sohag, where millions of young people currently have almost no access to services.
- Upgrade the Enablers: build the capacity of existing incubators, accelerators and business support organisations, multiplying impact through the actors already on the ground.
- Get Them Those Skills: close the employability gap with practical business, digital and soft-skills programmes for youth and women, together with education partners.
- Accelerate Startup Growth: the “popular demanded” one — tackle the scaling gap, since support today largely stops once a company is founded.
For each direction we identified the pains, goals, expected outcomes, target segments and a shortlist of credible partners, from Techne and Flat6Labs to Education for Employment and university venture labs, and we mapped the donors already investing heavily in this space.
Why this matters to us
Egypt mission reflects what BRULZ does best: entering a complex, fast-moving environment, listening to dozens of stakeholders, and converting that intelligence into decisions a client can act on. The final report gives SPARK a context analysis, partner shortlist, needs and problem analysis, and prioritised recommendations, everything its teams need to design an Egypt programme aligned with the SPARK 2030 Strategy.
Egypt’s young entrepreneurs are not short on ambition. What they need is for support to reach beyond the capital, in their language, at every stage of the journey. We are proud that our work helps organisations like SPARK make that happen.
Interested in ecosystem assessments, partner mapping or program development? Get in touch with the BRULZ team.