At this year’s EnterpriseAM Egypt Forum, we turned our focus to a challenge that faces nearly every Egyptian business looking to grow in new markets: how to expand into new and unfamiliar markets, and how to take your brand credibility and translate it into a new market to sell to people who have never heard of you before. Andrew Key, executive director at Enza, and Ahmed Wahby, group CEO for the Middle East and Africa at Egypt Education Platform (EEP) and Spark Education Platform (SEP), joined the stage to unpack how they’re doing just that. One builds the rails that power financial systems across Africa; the other exports Egyptian-built education models to Gulf cities.

Pick a market where regs and repatriation make sense: “How digitalized is it? What payment methods are being used? Can we repatriate profits in hard currency?” Andrew Key noted. For Enza, market selection begins with the obvious metrics: population size, GDP and scalability, followed by the maturity of the payments ecosystem, regulatory clarity, and currency stability. “A mature, stable regulatory environment is better for us,” he said. “If we can understand what the regulator expects of us and of our customers, we can assess whether we can meet those expectations.”

“Scaling outside Egypt had to start with building a scalable model inside Egypt,” said Ahmed Wahby, whose company now runs 25 educational assets serving some 20k students. For EEP, expansion starts where education quality gaps are most visible. “We study cities, not countries,” he said. “Abu Dhabi and Sharjah, yes; Dubai, no, because the quality gap isn’t big enough. Our value proposition starts where that gap exists.”

Chasing gaps, not geographies: Diversification across income segments helps EEP stay relevant through economic swings, Wahby said. “Education is tied to families’ financial situations, which can be turbulent,” he added. “We play across both affordable and premium segments” Enza applies a similar principle when sizing up competition, Key said.

“Competition is a good thing, it keeps you on your toes,” according to Key. For Enza, competition comes in a number of forms: Some banks or fintechs build their own systems, others operate regionally, and some focus on a single market. Enza’s focus spans ten African markets, with a strategy built around providing solutions that help banks and fintechs build relationships with SMEs. “There are 60 mn unbanked or underbanked SMEs across Africa, those 60 mn SMEs today are the med-sized and large businesses of the future… if payments can be the starting point for a relationship with them, banks can later cross-sell lending, deposits, and treasury products,” Key explained.

There are no wrong markets, just wrong timing or design: “There’s no such thing as a wrong market,” Wahby said. “Regulation can make or break an investment, but every market has a product that fits, you just have to design it right.” The only real deterrent, he added, is entering during periods of “major turbulence.”

Flexibility matters more than checklists. “You’ve got to go to places you didn’t plan to,” Key said. “French-speaking West Africa wasn’t on our list, but customers took us there. Sometimes you follow them where they go.”

Balancing speed with control is key: “Our scars help us avoid pitfalls,” Key said, describing Enza’s 60-person team led by veteran founders. “Younger team members solve problems faster, they see things differently. But you have to stay on the right side of regulators. Upset them, and your business is dead.”

“Success isn’t financials alone,” Wahby noted. “We measure quality outcomes: parent satisfaction, learning results, word of mouth.” He recalled spending six months preparing for EEP’s first big Saudi break only for it to collapse. “We were ready to do it again, and that’s how we won later. Pivoting is part of the game.”

FOMO is real: For Key, traction shows up when clients start spending behind Enza’s solutions. “If they’re investing in promoting what they’ve built on our platform, it’s working,” he said. “And when other banks come knocking because they don’t want to miss out, that’s proof too. FOMO is real.”

On earning trust before launching: “You can’t just show up and launch,” Wahby said. “You have to prep the market.” Before entering Saudi Arabia, EEP met repeatedly with the Ministry of Education and the Royal Commission of Riyadh. “We don’t send a logo into a market; we send the people behind the brand,” he added. “We grow them into regional roles and hire local talent who believe in what the brand stands for.”

Egypt’s real export story is talent: “Access to talent in Egypt is actually a competitive advantage,” Wahby said. EEP exports teachers and middle management to the Gulf while running its back office from Cairo, covering IT, procurement, and accounting. “It’s efficient and lets us reinvest in what matters most: quality.” “Pretty much our whole tech and ops team is in Egypt,” Key said.

The talent you can get in Egypt, would cost you 10x more in the UAE, according to Key. As Enza expands into Ghana and Nigeria, regulators now require qualified executives in those markets, so Key had to rethink how to scale. Maybe your CFO in Ghana is technically a CFO, but the group CFO sits elsewhere, he explained.

The formula? Credibility at home + agility abroad: “Ultimately, you have to go where the opportunity takes you,” Key said as the discussion wrapped. Wahby agreed: success abroad begins with credibility at home paired with the agility to adapt everywhere else.

Tap or click here to read the panel’s full transcript.

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