Egypt trains technicians to German standards, and Germany opens pathways to recruit them

Egypt is training technicians to German standards for its own factories, and Germany wants to hire them. Skills partnerships must serve both the German labor market and Egypt’s economic development, German State Minister Florian Hahn said on 5 October, according to Egypt’s Education Ministry statement. Egypt has imported Germany’s dual system twice before, both times underwritten by public, donor, or private money. SEU is testing whether private capital can run a dual degree at university level.

Ahly CIRA set up Saxony Egypt University (SEU) with Germany’s State of Saxony. CIRA Education owns 51% of Ahly CIRA and Ahly Capital Holding, the National Bank of Egypt’s investment arm, owns 49%.

The donor-backed first version: In 1991, then-President Hosni Mubarak and then-German Chancellor Helmut Kohl agreed on a German-backed overhaul of Egypt’s technical secondary schools as the economy opened up, according to a 2010 assessment (pdf) by the German Technical Cooperation (GTZ). The Mubarak-Kohl Initiative-Dual System piloted in 1994 in 10th of Ramadan, 6th of October, and Sadat City, with students in class two days a week and on factory floors four. The Education Ministry paid for schooling and investor associations for training and stipends, while Germany put EUR 28.5 mn into technical support through GTZ, now the German Agency for International Cooperation (GIZ), between 1994 and 2007. Its graduates fed Egyptian employers.

Egypt took over the program by law in 2007 when direct German support ended, according to the GTZ assessment. The 2010 assessment cited a CID Consulting survey from 2009 which reviewed 90 graduates: 85% had job offers at graduation, about half took them, and a third of those hired stayed with the factory that trained them. By 2023, the renamed Dual Education System had around 50k apprentices training with more than 3.5k companies, according to an International Labour Organization (ILO) brief (pdf).

The state-run second version: The Education Ministry said it opened its first three Applied Technology Schools (ATS) in 2018. The public schools pair classroom study with hands-on training from private and state-owned partner companies, and award a three-year technical secondary diploma.

The ATS network has scaled fast. It now runs 225 schools, 38 of them Egyptian-German, Education Minister Mohamed Abdel Latif told a Cabinet meeting earlier this month. One of the older schools is the Volkswagen Group School of Applied Technology, launched in 2021, whose graduates also earn certificates from the German-Arab Chamber of Industry and Commerce. The chamber says its accreditation serves the German, European, and global job markets. And Berlin wants more: Hahn pointed to 100 Egyptian-German vocational schools still to come.

The bank-backed third version: SEU moves the model up a level, from state secondary schools to a private four-year university degree. Ahly CIRA’s joint investments across education and healthcare have topped EGP 12 bn, CIRA Education CEO Mohamed El Kalla said in a July statement (pdf). SEU took its first intake in September 2024 and enrolled about 1.3k students in its first academic year. CIRA invested EGP 3 bn over the past two years and is lining up another EGP 2 bn over the next two, El Kalla said in August.

SEU runs on a 2+2 model, where students spend their first two years on the Cairo campus and can then transfer to Saxony for years three and four, finishing their degrees alongside placements with industrial partners including Volkswagen, Porsche, and Deutsche Bahn.

The Cairo half is where local employers come in. SEU trains students through protocols with 25 companies. Practical training is “delivered through a mix of university-built and partner-supported facilities,” SEU President Mohamed Abdel Rahman tells EnterpriseAM. GB Corp opens its workshops and GB Academy to automotive students, and SEU has signed agreements with Raya Logistics to launch advanced supply chain training and with Accor to run a teaching hotel, El Kalla tells us. Volkswagen has supplied parts and equipment for the automotive workshop and designed some of the labs, Abdel Rahman adds.

The Labor Ministry wants to integrate the model into its training centers. SEU signed a protocol with the ministry on 18 August to take its curriculum, 60% of which is practical training, according to a CIRA statement (pdf). The ministry will nominate trainees and set their financial support, while SEU designs and runs the courses and issues certificates accredited by both sides. An early priority is a training center for electric vehicle trades. The rollout is still being set up, with a joint committee now settling specializations and admission criteria before the first cohort, Abdel Rahman tells us.

SEU says Germany is one option among several. The university is built to serve local, regional, and international employers, and “placing graduates in Germany is not the university’s only purpose,” Abdel Rahman tells us. The Saxon-Egyptian university partnership, led by the University of Applied Sciences Zittau/Görlitz, says it aims to attract young Egyptians to study and build long-term careers in Saxony. SEU has opened its first center in Germany to connect Egyptian students with the German labor market, El Kalla said in August. And the state is helping: the Education Development Fund, chaired by the prime minister, signed with SEU in August 2025 to give graduates logistical and financial support for the German market, El Kalla tells us.

Fees run EUR 1k-1.4k annually depending on the program, with merit and need-based scholarships, Abdel Rahman explains. Some partner companies pay students a monthly allowance during the Cairo years, mainly in hospitality. For the German leg, SEU set up a separate company to handle housing and health coverage, and students can work alongside their studies to help cover living costs, he adds. But “growing involvement from industry partners, both Egyptian and international, is central to the model’s vision,” he says.

What’s next: No student has made the trip yet. SEU would send its first cohort to Germany next year, CIRA said in July. But no date has been set, and studies on bringing graduates back into Egypt’s labor market after their time in Germany are still being prepared, the company tells us.