Egypt launches agency to support African development

Egypt has launched an agency to focus on supporting major development projects in African countries and in other developing nations with which it has friendly relations. The Egyptian Partnership Agency for Development will focus mainly on the fields in which Egypt enjoys a comparative advantage and has significant experience, including telecommunications, transport and information technology, as well as health, agriculture and energy.

It was established in July through the merger of two other institutions that worked in this area: the Egyptian Fund for Technical Cooperation with Africa and the Egyptian Fund for Technical Cooperation with the Commonwealth, European Islamic Countries and the Recently Independent States.

The agency receives the money that previously went to these funds. The merger was designed to use this money more effectively.

The new agency will cover more than just the technical cooperation that the two merged funds focused on.

Hazem Fahmy, the agency’s secretary-general, tells SciDev.Net that the first task is to prepare the agency’s administrative structure. Its board met for the first time on 28 August.