Share
Al Alamein Hall, at the International Congress Center at Sharm El-Sheikh, hosted today, November 4th, 2018, a workshop titled “The role of entrepreneurs and start-ups in global economic growth”. The workshop was attended by Her Excellency Minister of Planning and Administrative Reform Dr. Hala El Said and Governor of the Central Bank of Egypt Tarek Amer.
The workshop addressed the mechanism of supporting entrepreneurship based on the fact that innovation is the key element for the establishment of projects. The mechanism focused on three main realms; the role of government, academic institutions and private sector. Dr. Rasha Tantawi, the Director of Technology Innovation and Entrepreneurship Centre (TIEC) referred to the role of government in supporting entrepreneurship and startups through identifying people with talents and capabilities, who are able to take decisions. In addition, she stated that the government has to develop a model of teaching via virtual classes putting technology into consideration. The academic circles should look for changing the stereotypical way of thinking, the dominant culture and integrating entrepreneurship into educational curricula. She added that the government should take into account the gender perspective at work place and it should support the participation of women in entrepreneurship for increasing Gross Domestic Product (GDP). She added that the government has to establish centers for encouraging talented persons and offering the financial and investment support. As an indicator that Egypt is moving ahead on the right path in the field of entrepreneurship, the World Bank stressed on the increase of investments in Egypt over the past period.
Valentina Primo, founder and CEO of Startups Without Borders, spoke about the Arab entrepreneurs, especially the refugees amongst them as becoming a source of assistance after they were recipients of aids. She also underpinned the role of the private sector in advocating entrepreneurship, as the private sector is assigned to contribute to the development of the product and to present it to the market, ensuring the availability of the funds and education in order to find new opportunities of investments, spread the trade mark and make use of the talented persons.
Wael El Desoki, Director of Entrepreneurship at the Maritime Academy, talked about the academic role in supporting entrepreneurship through developing a pilot model for the assessment of the idea among the students. He added that it is necessary to introduce the topic of entrepreneurship into educational curricula. Highlighting the huge potentials of youth to launch their own startups, Desoki referred to conducting competitions in the field of entrepreneurship to help youth instead of keeping them waiting for years for the implementation of their projects.
The workshop resulted in a number of recommendations, including: having contracts for regulating the work of startups, offering trainers to share their experiences with the beginners in the field of entrepreneurship, giving more interest to entrepreneurship amongst students and encouraging them to innovate new ideas, establishing innovative schools to enhance the entrepreneurship concept, redesigning the educational curricula and teaching young people in a more attractive manner while ensuring the efficiency of the teaching staff, establishing clubs inside the schools, inviting graduates to speak about the problems they faces in the marketplace, calling on universities to give more attention to the development of technology and the role of the human element, and stressing the role of media in introducing information about entrepreneurship and the means to support the concept.
STAY IN THE LOOP
