Executive education in Egypt rises above the “pains”: Executive education has been getting increased traction in recent years, while competition has picked up within the broader learning and development sector. There is broad consensus among the major education service providers that the executive education sector, and learning and development (L&D) at large, represents a substantial market with considerable untapped potential — albeit lacking concrete figures to demonstrate its substantial market value. Even though covid-19 and the weakening EGP took a toll on the executive education sector with some players leaving the market entirely, corporates and education service providers say that education is a necessity, not a luxury amid a challenging environment. Navigating the challenging terrain lies in mastering the art of “agility” — the capacity to morph and adapt to the ever-changing, turbulent market dynamics that Egypt is no stranger to.

REFRESHER- What’s executive education again? Executive education is a type of post-graduate education that is geared towards helping executives, business leaders and professionals work towards enhancing their skillsets. Executive education is a “mixture between scientific knowledge, experiential knowledge and relatability to a certain business. The relatability factor and the application factor is a bit higher than what you can get from a PhD or a masters degree, or what you can get from a certificate or a continuing education degree,” Manager at the AUC School of Business Executive Education Yasmin Khalil told Enterprise.

It is a promising market: The exact size of the market is difficult to determine given the unavailability of financial disclosures. However, we were given rough estimates: “We have our numbers in terms of our alumni that we have gathered throughout the years, it's more than 4k alumni, but that’s only ours, if we add the AUC business school and the School of Continuing Education, it will be in the hundreds of thousands,” according to AUC’s Senior Director of Executive Education at the School of Global Affairs & Public Policy (GAPP), Mohamed Fahmy. The GAPP Executive Education Program boasts over 200 programs, engaging a participant base of 4k individuals and delivering a total of 25k training hours.

…with lots of potential: “In terms of the potential of the market, we’re talking about the whole workforce of the country, mns of people that need this kind of intervention. The typology of intervention varies from one sector to another. But in our case, working with the state, 6 mn employees work for the different government entities. This is just the state. If we add in the civil society and the private sector, we’re talking about more millions that need this type of intervention. The market is just massive in Egypt,” Fahmy tells us.

Financing and resources are often a pain point: GAPP ExEd primarily focuses on upskilling individuals in the public sector and civil society — both sectors that frequently lack sufficient funding and resources for self-financed training, unlike the private sector. “Sometimes there are great ideas and people know what they want to enhance their abilities, but they’re stuck when it comes to financing or being able to create their own resources for that particular training or opportunity,” Fahmy says. GAPP ExEd tries to bridge the gap between donors and recipients, aligning their interests, and securing funding stands as a key opportunity, marking success when both their visions converge.

ExEd also grappled with difficulties amid the economic challenges: The market experienced several setbacks this year due to the devaluation and the FX crunch, prompting some “big” players in the sector to exit the market entirely, Executive Education Director at ESLSCA Wael Farag told us. Currently, industries are grappling with concerns related to “supply chain management and sustainability in supply chain” — issues emblematic of the current economic situation, to which corporations turn to education providers for help, according to Farag.

Education providers should capitalize on agility: “Education is not a luxury anymore because of the shifts that happen daily in the economic scene. They need programs agile enough to address all the needs resulting from recent changes. Executives need to be well-equipped to adapt and thrive,” Farag tells us.

Sustainability + digital transformation were (unsurprisingly) the trending topics for ExEd this year: the global — and local — shift towards being sustainable and having a competitive digital infrastructure trickled down to individuals and corporates who had to adapt to new ways of operating, embracing eco-friendly practices, and upgrading their digital capabilities to stay relevant in this evolving landscape, Farag told us. Individuals and corporates are also increasingly “interested in making AI relevant in their own working places,” according to Fahmy.

Education service providers need to develop programs that are malleable and could cater to the ever-shifting needs of corporations and individuals. “With the very dynamic market we’re in, corporates sometimes have to shift or change the structure of the training or needs, so they need a training provider that has agility to be able to redirect the training or change times or dates,” HR Programs Manager at the AUC School of Business Executive Education Shireen El Kaluobi told us.

Your top education stories for the week: Nahdet Misr inks funding agreement for educational project: Publishing house and educational services provider Nahdet Misr will receive a EUR 3.5 mn grant from Germany’s Facility Investing for Employment to help establish the Ta’heal International Academy for vocational education and training, it said in a press release (pdf).

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