By Ayman Ismail, Assistant Professor and Jameel Chair of Entrepreneurship at The American University in Cairo The final day of the Egyptian Economic Development Conference (EEDC) was mostly about negotiating and signing many contracts, counting the Dollars, and celebrating success. While the Suez Canal Zone (SCZ) started the day with four workshops to explain the different future investment opportunities to investors, the real action was taking place behind the scenes in intense negotiations to conclude other deals. The SCZ projects were not ready for this conferences yet, so they’re likely to be offered at a later stage (and hopefully attracting additional large investments, especially from China and the UAE). The rest of the day had a number of other panels on economic and social inclusion, technology and innovation, financing emerging markets, youth and sports. There were also five sectoral sessions on power, retail and internal trade, agriculture, transport and logistics, and entrepreneurship. In the entrepreneurship session, the World Bank announced $300 million to the Social Fund for Development (SFD) earmarked to small loans for youth-led small and micro enterprises. Before going to the celebratory part, what exactly did this conference accomplish? Here…
EEDC: A Reason For Egyptians To Regain Hope In A Brighter Future
March 18, 2015
