NIGSD Executive Director participates in the closing ceremony of the “Visa Everywhere” competition to support startups

Dr. Sherifa Sherif, Executive Director of the National Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development (NIGSD), participated in the closing ceremony of the “Visa Everywhere” competition for 2022, which was launched by Visa for the first time in Egypt in cooperation with the Fintech Egypt initiative of the Central Bank of Egypt.
The initiative aims to support startups and help them open up new opportunities by providing a global platform to showcase their pioneering solutions.

During her speech, Dr. Sherifa Sherif said that investing in young people is always rewarding, as young people constitute more than half of Egypt's population.
Sherif stressed that engaging these young people in finding innovative solutions to promote financial technology, digital transformation, and financial inclusion is a prerequisite for achieving intergenerational justice, economic growth, and ensuring inclusiveness and sustainability of societies, and thus achieving sustainable development goals.
Sherif explained that digital technologies have advanced at an unprecedented speed in the past few years, especially after the Corona pandemic, as the past two years have shown that everyone needs economic growth, dynamism, and innovation to keep pace with this rapid progress in the coming years.

She noted that these new digital technologies represent opportunities to enhance youth participation in the labor market and enhance their financial and digital inclusion.
Sherif stressed the importance of economic empowerment of these young people and benefiting from their innovations, by supporting start-ups and entrepreneurship.


Sherif pointed out that small and medium enterprises and emerging companies are the main engines to stimulate economic growth and create job opportunities, as they play an important role in alleviating poverty and reducing unemployment, especially among young people.
Sherif stressed that promoting entrepreneurship is one of the main objectives of the Egyptian government, pointing out that Egypt has witnessed a remarkable development in the field of entrepreneurship in the past years, as entrepreneurship today constitutes 40% of the Egyptian economy, according to the World Bank.
During her speech, Dr. Sherifa Sherif reviewed the Sustainable Innovation Lab project, which was launched in 2021 as the first laboratory of its kind in the Middle East and Africa region, a project designed to build an integrated and comprehensive ecosystem for entrepreneurship.
 This project enables young people to establish their businesses, ranging from training in entrepreneurial skills to providing credit and investment financing.
The Executive Director of the National Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development also stressed the importance of promoting equality and equal opportunities for both genders concerning entrepreneurship to promote inclusive and sustainable growth.
 Sherif explained that one of the most important obstacles that women face in entrepreneurship; The digital gender divide where females have less access to technology and the Internet than males.
 Sherif pointed out that the institute, in cooperation with the United Nations Development Program and the global company Cisco, launched the national initiative "She is for a digital future", intending to bridge the digital gender gap.

 About 2,000 women have been trained so far in this initiative, and it is targeted that the number of trainees will reach 8,000 by the end of 2022.