JICA’s new initiative to build a more sustainable Egypt
As one of the Middle East’s biggest hubs for tech innovation, the Egyptian startup ecosystem has fostered a lot of the MENA region’s biggest tech startups like SWVL, Fawry, Vezeeta, and many other billion-dollar enterprises.
The active environment in the Egyptian startup ecosystem has had a burgeoning brew of new disruptive organizations.
It is safe to say that bold entrepreneurship is the driving force for economic growth and its contribution to the tackling of social challenges cannot be overstated.
Just look at the US and Japan and how their work to stimulate entrepreneurship has led them, when it comes to building a not only sustainable but thriving economy, supporting startups is a key.
Running a successful startup in countries in the Middle East, like Egypt for example, involves tackling quite unique challenges. The Middle East has quite the analytical workforce, and with the failure of many startups, comes the crucial step of applying the lessons learned.
-
JICA, the Japanese governmental development agency, aimed at fostering innovation by collaborating with local startups to contribute to Sustainable Developmental Goals in various countries, including -but not limited to- Egypt.
In Egypt, four startups were selected after competitive selection process among 44 applications from startups in different sectors like health, education, fintech, training and agribusiness. These four startups were top ranked with high level of expectations.
JICA support is mainly focused on developing companies’ new business from one stage to the next. This includes support on various grounds including testing and validating the product, marketing, PR activities, business model development, linkages to investors, and so on, with the support of experts in each field.
-
Practiq
PractiQ Digital Consultants Team was hired to provide Monitoring and Mentoring services for the selected startups. PractiQ is a management consultancy firm specialized in Managing transformations through technology-friendly enablement. PractiQ operates across different functional streams including decision support, operations efficiency and capacity building.