Rising food prices amid food security warnings have “triggered a global crisis that will drive millions more into extreme poverty, magnifying hunger and malnutrition while threatening to erase hard-won gains in development,” said a World Bank update in July. As of July, the Agriculture Price Index was 19% higher than it was in January 2021, noted a World Bank paper. “Information from between March and June 2022 shows high inflation in almost all low- and middle-income countries,” said the paper, adding that “93.8% of low-income countries, 89.1% of lower-middle-income countries and 89% of upper-middle-income countries have seen inflation levels above…
Author: Tamer Hafez
The 2020 pandemic left little doubt among businesses and individuals that the future of work, social interaction, services, payments and shopping will be digital. “We will look back at 2020 as the moment that changed everything,” said the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in a March 2021 article. “Nowhere else has unprecedented and unforeseen growth occurred as in the digital and e-commerce sectors.” However, 2022 hasn’t been a good year for tech startups and high-fliers. More than 414 tech companies, including Meta, Netflix and Twitter, laid off 58,885 employees since the start of 2022 at press time, according…
In 2007, the world gasped when Apple CEO Steve Jobs introduced the first touchscreen device that played music, made calls and accessed the internet — the iPhone. Since then, it has been the benchmark for how smartphones should look, operate, and could and should do. And it has inspired a generation of companies that are constantly looking for their iPhone moments. One approach seeks a technically brilliant, charismatic, market-savvy leader, following Apple’s success formula. “It seems like everybody these days is looking for an early version of Steve Jobs,” Greg Satell, author of “Cascades: How to Create a Movement that…
Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund announced the acquisition of minority stakes in four Egyptian state-owned companies listed on EGX for a total of $1.3 billion. The companies are Abu Qir Fertilizers and Chemical Industries, Misr Fertilizers Production Co., Alexandria Container and Cargo Handling, and payments firm E-Finance for Financial and Digital Investments. As of August, Saudi Arabia’s investments in Egypt reached $32 billion via 6,800-plus companies. That includes 14 investment agreements signed in June worth $7.7 billion. Egypt has had a bumper M&A year. In August, a report from Ernst & Young said Egyptian companies signed 65 deals worth $3.2…
Many management gurus emphasize that workplace culture is a key to business success. “Maybe you have an incredible product and provide marvelous services. But if your work culture is terrible, your business is going to hit more than a few rough bumps,” wrote Barasha Medhi, a marketer at Vantage Circle, in a January blog on the company’s website. Many Egypt-based companies, like others elsewhere, still allow remote or hybrid work environments across entire organizations or specific departments. “The reality is that companies … now offer more flexibility,” according to an October publication titled “2022 Global Culture Report” by O.C. Tanner,…
The increasing number and complexity of environmental and technological challenges, coupled with strained natural resources, require innovative actions. “Intellectual property-based industries are significant drivers of GDP and employment rates in both developed and developing economies,” wrote Satya Srija, a law student at Bennett University in India’s Legal Service e-Journal. They are an “essential and rising element of every contemporary economy.” A legal framework to protect new ideas is vital to fostering them and help guarantee sustainable economic growth and improved quality of life. “Intellectual property rights [IPR] … propel society by encouraging innovation and therefore reflect its progress,” Ed White…
With consumers facing higher prices for everything from food staples to luxury items, they must make tough choices about spending. “I don’t know what inflation means exactly, but prices have increased by at least 20% to 30%, and sometimes 50%,” Elham Mohamed, a 40-year-old government employee, told the Middle East Institute, a U.S.-based think tank. “I had to give up many of the items I usually buy.” Accordingly, company CEOs must take critical steps to ensure their products sell during those harsh times, curb production cost surges, and employ top talents to steer the company from that crunch. Those changes…
The COVID-19 pandemic and its aftermath, including supply chain shortages, magnified the incumbent risk that all African nations depend on imported medicine. “Pharmaceutical products are currently manufactured in countries such as South Africa, Morocco and Egypt,” Janet Byaruhanga, a senior program officer for public health at the African Union Development Agency (AUDA), wrote in September 2020 in an op-ed on the UN website. Yet “as a whole, Africa currently imports more than 90% of its pharmaceutical and medical consumables. It is unsustainable.” That dependence is one reason African nations have never realized their full GDP growth potential. “Widespread ill health…
Egypt is in the midst of a real estate construction renaissance that could last for decades. In December, Deputy Minister of Housing, Utilities and Urban Communities Khaled Abbas told AmCham Egypt about government plans to build 42 new cities by 2052 as part of its goal to increase inhabited land from 7% to 14% to accommodate the population’s 2.5% annual growth. If not done right, however, this construction boom could conflict with Egypt’s environmental sustainability goals. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), the buildings and construction sectors combined are responsible for almost one-third of total global final energy consumption. It also emits 28%…
For many low- and middle-income countries, foreign direct investment (FDI) is vital for making their economies eco-friendly and sustainable. It brings “capital, employment, export opportunities, greater consumer choice, advanced technologies, managerial know-how and overall economic growth” to countries with the most profitable opportunities but lack finance or know-how noted the World Economic Forum’s Davos Agenda published this year. Nowadays, foreign investors want to see more than just high profits and healthy balance sheets; many are requiring reports on environmental, social and governance (ESG) plans. “The ESG factor assessments are more of an inherent aspect of a sound investment process than…