Egypt’s population rose from 72 million in 2006 to 100 million in 2020, and is expected to reach 128 million by 2030. This spike in growth is mainly due to the increasing birth rate, which rose from an average of 3.0 to 3.5 births per woman from 2008 to 2013. As the population rises, so do the concerns pertaining to achieving inclusive economic development.

John D. Gerhart Center for Philanthropy, Civic Engagement and Responsible Business aimed to tackle this issue with the youths’ lens. A nine-month-long Egypt-wide youth competition aimed at developing innovative solutions for Egypt’s family planning issue was implemented jointly by Gerhart Center and John Snow, Inc. (JSI), under the patronage of Egypt’s National Population Council during the academic year 2020/2021. This activity is part of USAID’s Strengthening Egypt’s Family Planning Program (SEFPP).

“This impressive competition, implemented by our long-time valued partner AUC, in conjunction with the National Population Council and JSI, through the USAID-funded SEFPP, merges USAID support in Egypt’s youth with the government of Egypt goals in voluntary family planning,” commented Margaret Sancho, deputy mission director at USAID Egypt, during the closing ceremony of the competition held on September 28, at the AUC Tahrir Campus.

During the span of the nine-month program, fifteen initiatives were developed by 64 students, aged from 17 to 23 years old, from more than 20 public and private universities around Egypt. “Participants were involved in capacity building, initiative implementation, teamwork, and community outreach”, explained Nada Bahgat, senior specialist at Gerhart Center.

Experts from Gerhart Center equipped the students with technical and non-technical skills (such as field research, problem analysis, project management, communication, and social media) to render them health ambassadors around Egypt. “Implementing this program arose from AUC’s mission to empower young people to be part of the positive change in their communities and to lead change through creativity, innovation, and proactivity”, said Alaa El Din Adris, associate provost for research, innovation, and creativity, highlighting how AUC values its collaboration and active engagement with Egyptian universities.

“The project is a definite eye-opener, as I have seen nothing like it before, especially targeting university students,” Bassant Eid, a participant in the project, declared. “I learned a lot of terms regarding sexual health and family planning; I discovered that I was not really that aware of the concern,” Ali Tamer, another participant, commented.

The program is based on experiential teaching and learning methods, providing students with real-world relevance, problem-based learning, and individual development. Full of enthusiasm, the students designed ideas that are interdisciplinarily focused on technology, counseling, art, community work, podcasting, animation, and social media. “Going to the field and dealing with the people taught us about the target population and how to best deal with them; this will help me along with my life,” Mira Emad, another participant, mentioned.

Ahsbha Sah (Think Smart) won first place, being awarded EGP 20,000 to help them implement their vision. Taking place in El-Demerdash hospital, the initiative aimed to orient patients through a booth at the hospital about contraceptives and family planning.

Sahel el-Ziyada, Sa’ab el-Ejada (Easy-to-be-Raised, Hard-to-be-Mastered), and Ehna fe el-Boadai’en (We are in the After) won second place, being awarded EGP 10,000. The first team’s idea is to publish an awareness campaign titled “Sawa/Together”, while the second team aims to establish an interactive theater, accompanied by a parallel social media campaign, with discussions to follow the play.

“We truly believe that the most important initiatives are those focused on youth, especially when those initiatives go along with the developmental plans of the government of Egypt,” highlighted H.E. Minister of Planning and Economic Development Hala El Said during the closing ceremony of the competition. Adding that, “youth comprises 60% of the Egyptian population, and they are the future of this country.”

Watch the full closing ceremony here.

After a year and a half of lockdown, AUC had finally opened its doors for its students, faculty, and staff. The next step was to celebrate last year’s and this year’s graduates with a live commencement ceremony.

September 28 and 29 are the days AUC School of Business Spring ‘20, Fall ’20, and Spring ‘21 graduates finally received their diplomas during a commencement ceremony they had truly deserved. "Commencement days are the culmination of several years of study, hard work, commitment and sacrifices not only for you, the students, but also the families, the faculty, the staff and the entire school community," Dean Sherif Kamel opened the ceremony.

Classes of 2020 were composed of 36 graduate students and 340 undergraduate students; with 46 students graduating with honors (cum laude), 96 students with high honors (magna cum laude), and 100 students with highest honors (summa cum laude).

The school graduates of Fall 2021, on the other hand, were composed of 51 graduate students and 540 undergraduate students; among those, 41 students were graduating with honors (cum laude), 52 students with high honors (magna cum laude), and 57 with highest honors (summa cum laude).

Coming back to campus to graduate is something that our newly minted alumni were looking forward to. “I feel very nostalgic and very, very overwhelmed,” Ziena Halaly, graduate of the class of 2020, described her feelings coming again to campus, adding that “AUC was basically my home.” “Thrilling,” “inspiring,” and “life-changing” is what the graduate's four-year experience at AUC School of Business was like. 

Graduates of the school have experienced the shift for online learning, for some 16 months, and for others just over 8 months. “We, as a school, together with the university leadership and the entire university community, have your wellbeing, health and safety at our utmost priority – a goal equally important to what we all strive to, day in and day out, and that is to offer you a unique impactful learning experience,” highlighted Kamel. 

Speaking of impact, this year’s guest speakers were two powerful businessmen who left their mark on Egypt’s economy. “Today as you graduate, don’t think you will stop learning; you learned how to learn,” commented Hisham Ezz Al-Arab, managing partner at HE Advisory and former chairman of CIB Egypt, advising the graduating class of 2020, to keep on with their growth and development beyond the doors of the university.  “As you go into the business world, be keen to interact, accept and learn from others. Listen to understand, don’t listen to respond. Have confidence in yourself and respect yourself through honesty,” he added.

On a different note, Alaa Hashim, co-founder and executive partner of Transcendium and chairman of Delicious Inc., was concerned with the role the graduates are about to play in the larger Egyptian community and the world. “If you guys will not make our future better, who will?” he asked the graduating class of 2021.

As always, the graduates also received advice from their fellows. During the 2020 ceremony, Halaly advised current and prospective students at AUC School of Business to “be open-minded and try a lot of different things.”

Feras Almekhlafy, graduate of the class of 2021, emphasized on the importance of keeping a positive attitude and good connections with each other. “It is good to have competition between you and your classmates, but keep it healthy. Don’t let competition and striving to be the best get in the way of making connections with other students, because you don’t know, in the not so distant future, you will meet again and you will remember your life as students, even if that happens 20 years from now,” he stressed.

Representing the graduate class of 2021, Mahmoud Kalila commenced his speech stating that “the year 2020 is a special one, it's the year that shook the whole world. I believe that my past experiences prior to 2020 have prepared me for this difficult year.” He explained: “All those skills you learned so far, the traumas, the experiences and the blessings you counted made you who you are today. Today is the present, the junction in time where you can alter your destiny. There is hope in the making.”

This message of humbleness and hope was also shared by Youssef Abdelkader to the graduating class of 2020. “Kindness is the most important course in our curriculum as humans. It is the prerequisite to all the important courses and it should be an easy A, because in each and everyone one of us there is fundamental good,” said Abdelkader.

Lastly, Nour Hesham, who delivered the speech on behalf of the undergraduate class of 2021, shared her unique perspective on how, as humans, we are all storytellers. “This moment, our final goodbye is the start of something bigger than all of us, a story worth a thousand words. It is time for us to step out into the real world and finally tell the stories that we have.”

Watch the full commencements, here for 2021, and here for 2020.

Maintaining its leading position as Africa’s number one business school, AUC School of Business was awarded the Golden Trophy at the Eduniversal Awards Ceremony 2021 for the fifth consecutive year last Thursday.

The award is based on the results of the 2021 Eduniversal Deans’ Vote Survey which ranks the top three business schools in each geographical zone. The award winning schools are recognized as the highest-ranked business schools among one thousand schools across 154 countries worldwide.

“We work together throughout the year to always better our service in the community,” stated Dean Sherif Kamel while expressing his delight to be voted again by Eduniversal as the top business school in Africa.

The award comes as part of the 14th Eduniversal World Convention (EWC), held virtually for the second year, which provides a venue for deans and directors of business schools worldwide to come together to exchange ideas and discuss pressing issues that face their institutions. This year, the three-day event was streamed from Paris’ iconic Palace of Versailles.

“We are celebrating institutions with the highest level of innovation and creativity enabling positive changes both at the strategic and operational levels,” noted Martial Guiette, founder and CEO of Eduniversal Group. Guiette also took the time to thank Eduniversal’s International Scientific Committee, which the school’s Dean Sherif Kamel is a member of, representing Africa, for helping organize this year’s event.

In addition to receiving the award, the school also took part in two separate activities during the convention. Under the slogan “A Commitment to Transformation and a Pledge for Impact”, the school was featured in the third episode of EWC’s “Let’s Meet on my Campus” series. Dean Kamel also moderated a panel discussion titled “Globalisation and the Future of Higher Education”.

Headquartered in Paris, Eduniversal is a global ranking and rating agency specializing in higher education. The company has established strong expertise in evaluating academic institutions and programs in France since 1994, and internationally since 2007. Every year, Eduniversal ranks the best one thousand business schools in 154 countries in 9 geographical zones: Africa, Central Asia, Eastern Europe, Eurasia and the Middle East, Far East Asia, Latin America, North America, Oceania, Western Europe.

Watch Dean Sherif Kamel accept the award here.

After being streamed virtually for the past two years, the AUC Venture Lab Demo Day, featuring Arab African International Bank Cycle 16 and Fintech Spring '21 Cycle, was finally held physically again at the AUC Tahrir Campus this September. The event presented us with a total of 22 dynamic startups and entrepreneurs.

V-Lab’s impact over the past eight years is truly something to be proud of. With a total of 250 graduate startups raising EGP 3 billion in investments and creating more than 10 thousand jobs and earning EGP 835 million in revenues, the V-Lab’s startups have never failed to exceed expectations.

Of course, the most celebrated achievement by V-Lab’s startups thus far is the Unicorn exit of the Startup Accelerator Cycle 8 graduate Swvl this summer. The deal that values the company at roughly $1.5 billion made Swvl the first Middle East unicorn to list on Nasdaq, the largest African unicorn debut on any U.S.listed exchange, and the only tech-enabled mass transit solutions company to list on any stock exchange.

But there is more.

Almost every week we hear news about AUC Venture Lab startups achieving one milestone after another:

Most recently, Cycle 12 graduate Little Blessings was named “E-Commerce Website of the Year 2021” at the 2021 Seamless Awards Ceremony held in Dubai in September. While Spring ’21 Fintech graduate Stryve won the first prize of the Arab Financial Inclusion Innovation Prize (AFIIP), one of the region's leading scouts when it comes to financial inclusion.

V-Lab startups are also expanding their reach regionally, specifically in the Gulf area. E-commerce graduate Hoods' (Cycle 15) has recently expanded to Dubai and is now in negotiations with investment funds in Egypt, UAE and Saudi Arabia. Cycle Eight graduate Bosta will be entering the Saudi Arabian market by 2022. The overnight delivery provider for e-commerce companies is planning to expand across the Gulf region, targeting not only Saudi Arabia but also UAE.

In the meantime, other startups are expanding their services. For instance, CreditFins (Fall ’21) is currently working on the “CreditFins alpha card”, a new feature that will appeal to a wider customer base after closing a pre-seed funding round led by AUC Angels, Flat6Labs, and other investors.

Speaking of funding, Teegara.com, the Cycle 15 B2B2C marketplace, closed a five-figure pre-seed round led by Alexandria Angels and angel investors from KSA, Egypt, and the Netherlands; whereas Schoolz (Cycle 16), the transportation platform that provides safe and traceable ride-sharing trips for school students, raised six-figure pre-seed funding from investors in Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

Meanwhile, Fall ’16 fintech graduate Neqabty signed a partnership agreement with Vezeeta.com and the Egyptian Engineers Syndicate to provide better healthcare services to more than 700,000 engineers and enable them to access the best healthcare services available.

Our V-Lab entrepreneurs have also been making headlines in the media including this Startup Scene feature on Hussien Momtaz, co-founder and CEO of Koinz (Cycle Seven), along with Tinder Founder Justin Mateen discussing what made Mateen decide to invest in Koinz and why he finds it the next success story.

It is important to note that all these achievements took place over the past three to four months only.

“It’s not about the School of Business. It’s not about AUC. It’s about the impact we make for the community,” stated Dean Sherif Kamel during the latest Demo Day, explaining that the V-Lab’s journey is to accelerate towards even more innovation, resilience and creativity.

“We don’t just work with startups, we work with government entities, corporates and the civil society to create a buzz across the community and scale our impact. We are part of an ecosystem that is growing.”

This year’s Demo Day featured eight fintech graduates and 14 startups covering health-tech, e-commerce, sustainability, AI, logistics and creative industries, in addition to celebrating the Fintech Accelerator’s fifth anniversary. It also featured a panel discussion with representatives of some of V-Lab’s partners DROSOS FOUNDATION, Mountain View and Shell Egypt discussing why they decided to support entrepreneurs.

The Demo Day also celebrated AUC Venture Lab’s strong network of partners. The AUC Venture Lab Startup Accelerator is supported by the Arab African International Bank (AAIB), DROSOS FOUNDATION, Shell Egypt, the Danish-Arab Partnership Programme, Hivos Foundation, Oxfam, Mountain View and Nestlé. The AUC Venture Lab Fintech Accelerator is powered by the Commercial International Bank (CIB) and in partnership with the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and Mastercard.

Seeing business leaders embrace entrepreneurship is something that the V-Lab has strived for. “The kinds of partnerships are changing, a lot of people are now thinking about how to support entrepreneurs,” noted Ayman Ismail, Abdul Latif Jameel endowed chair of entrepreneurship, associate professor and the founding director of the AUC Venture Lab. Many businesses and corporations are inspired by the V-Lab and are trying to become more entrepreneurial. “They are working with entrepreneurs, investing in them, using their products and building a relationship between the startups and their own companies,” explained Ismail.

Ismail also highlighted the trend of “serial entrepreneurs”, who after exiting from startups go on to build other ones. He also noted that the quality and characteristics of the startups and their respective entrepreneurs are changing. “The level of the complexity of the ideas and businesses are changing, and the V-Lab is responding to this,” he stated. The program is now more focused on growth-hacking, access to investment and investment readiness, business building, and entrepreneurial leadership.

As we speak, AUC Venture Lab continues to grow more and more, whether through launching new programs or upgrading and refining its existing ones, further making the school and AUC immensely proud.

Check out these playlists of the pitches of this year's startup and fintech accelerators’ graduates.