The following are the outputs of the captioning taken during an IGF intervention. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> MAHITAB ASSRAN: Good evening, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. Today we have a session on Building Bridges in Africa in the Digital Age. We have three distinguished speakers. The first speaker is Mr. Tamer Taha, advisor to the Minister of Planning, economic development, and international cooperation from the Arab Republic of Egypt.
We also have Ms. The head of three digitalisation projects in GIZ Egypt. And we have our third virtual speaker, Mr. Allan joining us virtually from Uganda. He is the founder of iventures Africa, a leading innovator in the entrepreneurship field.
We will start with a short video about the HAFIZ platform which we are here to launch followed by a presentation by Mr. Tamer Taha on the platform.
Would you like to join?
(Video Playing)
>> Egypt's private sector is ready to explore new opportunities and drive the nation's growth. International development finance to the private sector in Egypt has reached over $10 billion since 2020: We aim to further mobilise global partnership for the private sector. The private sector engagement portal was established as Egypt's economic conference 2022 for a comprehensive hub. Introducing Hub for Advisory, Finance and Investment for Enterprises, the new portal by the Ministry of International Cooperation is a one stop hub for financial instruments and business support opportunities targeted toward businesses of all sizes and fields in Egypt. Through tailored AI powered tools and advanced mapping options companies in Egypt can access available resources. Grants development finance, technical assistance, training programs, events, knowledge resources, and more.
Visit www. Privatesector.moic.gov.eg.
>> Sorry to interrupt. I don't know if you can hear us or not online but we cannot see the video.
>> Thank you for that introduction. I'm the advisor to the Ministry of Planning and cooperation and economic development. Perhaps before we start, let the Ministry of Is the ministry mandated to work with all development partners and linking the government with the private sector and the international development partners. We work through various activities including development financing, direct investments. Private sector investments, grants, and so on and so forth. We work on a multistakeholder approach with all the different stakeholders.
This is just an example of the different development partners that we work on whether bilateral, different partners or multilateral, including different international financial institutions. And all these development partners are actually very, very interested in supporting private sector. And it's very obvious in their country strategies and the programs. This is just some examples of the country structures that we're developing with the different development partners.
Perhaps we can ask ourselves why is the private sector as important as included in all the strategies because it's the engine of growth. It's the source for innovation, for efficiency, for any project to be implemented in an innovative way. It has to we have to count on the private sector and their knowledge, their expertise in implementing these kind of projects. Egypt is a huge economy. We have more than 3.4 million establishment, private establishment whether as a company, microenterprise, or so on. Start up or large companies.
And we have more than 800,000 graduates yearly. This shows the impact or the potential impact of the private sector in not only creating jobs but also in leading growth and development.
The development partners play an important role in supporting the private sector whether in terms of access of finance through providing concessional financing loans, direct investments, grants, grantees for trade and so on. But also a very important aspect, providing capacity building for the private sector in different important topics, as well as improving the regulatory environment and providing support for the government to provide good infrastructure that would actually enhance the private sector activities in the economy.
This is done via continuous discussion with the private sector and private sector engagement.
So these are the tools, as I mentioned. All these tools, there are so many tools. However, they're not really known to the different companies. It's only known to a few of them.
Finance is one of them. Since 2020, throughout the past four and a half years, the local private sector has benefited around $12 billion USD from all the international development partners in loans or direct investments or guarantees.
The sectors that have benefited the most are the manufacturing sector, financial sector, including banks who get line of credits from (?) and trickle it down to smaller enterprises.
Service sectors, especially ICT and start ups, tourism, hotels, healthcare. A new industry is booming given the sector given the resources available in terms of solar energy and wind energy. The Suez Canal is an international trade hub that by which passes around 12% of international trade. So all these sectors have benefited from the development financing.
Around 42% of the funding funneled to the start ups is provided by the international development partners. So all these are kind of the gives you an idea of the importance of the financing provided by development partners.
These are some examples of recent projects from including the Suez wind project by the bank, the credit line to the commercial international bank from the EBRD. And from the EIB as well and form the Egyptian American enterprise fund. They got investments from they put investments into the capital venture which is a private equity investment fund. There's also the expansion of silversands hotel in Grenada. Not only they support project in Egyptian but financing Egyptian companies to expand in Africa and elsewhere.
So this is an example of financial facility from the bank to all the development in the Egyptian company and Egyptian construction and urban development company to expand their activities abroad.
In addition to the financial part, they also provide technical assistance. These are some of the projects related to, for example, capacity building for the employees, gender equality, environmental capacity enhancement, access to markets globally, innovation, and so on. All these are examples. I mean, all the examples are available on our website, which I'm happy to also share it with you after the presentation.
Adding to this, we also work with different partners in terms of strengthening the business environment for the companies. And this is just some examples of the work we're doing with The World Bank and the AIB. The partners provide a lot of knowledge and rich knowledge to the private sector, whether it's sectoral focused reports, diagnostics, and so on.
While all this is available, it is a huge problem, there is a huge challenge. All this information are not efficiently provided to the private sector. Why? Because, first of all, there's an information overload. There are so many things happening. For a company to keep up with all this information, it's almost impossible.
There's a huge time consuming process to search. If I'm a company looking for having access to a certain service provided by a development partner, I have to go to each website of each of the development partner and try to find my best fit.
Adding to the language barrier, as we all know most of this information is available whether in English or French or Spanish. But they're not available in Arabic, for example, in the context of Egypt.
Finally, there is a difficulty to understand or compare, because there's no standard criteria where me as a company, I can't compare between the different services provided by these different development partners.
That's why, a based on the directors of the President as well as the economic conference back in 2022, we have the ministry has taken the lead in order to create a platform which is the Hub for Advisory, Finance and Investment for Enterprises, abbreviated as HAFIZ, it means incentive. To provide an incentive for the private sector in order to partner more with development partners and get more access to knowledge request to information about how can they be part of the development agenda of Egypt and our vision, Egypt 2030.
So the platform basically is definitely was implemented in partnership the GIZ who I would like to thank them for their support. It was the aim of the platform is to create linkages between the private sector and all of Egypt's development partners in order to provide them with access to finance, access to capacity building programs, access to tenders, and access to any opportunity that they would benefit.
Since the launch, it was launched back in December, and since the launch we have more than 40 development partners who are engaged with us. More than 90 financial and capacity building and business advisory services on the platform. More than 474 tenders that were published, whether in Egypt or globally that are relevant to the private sector, the local private sector. More than 200 calls and opportunities, five thematic dialogues, and more than 14,000 active users. Which explains the interest from the private sector in such a tool and the gap that was existing.
This is the platform. I will walk you through it very quickly. It has a catalog of all the financial instruments provided by the development partners whether equity or the company can actually look for the service by development partner or category or even targeted business, whether they are targeting small enterprises or large companies or funds or SMEs and so on.
Same goes for the capacity building. For each of this it has all the details, how the company can apply, what are the process, what are the documents needed? What's the process? What's the criteria? What's the expected timeline for application? And so on.
Added to this, there was a huge gap also in terms of information about the existing tenders. We all know that The World Bank and AFRICAN DEVELOPMENT BANK and all these organisations finance big projects, yet the local companies might not be able to apply because they don't know about it, simply said.
So what we did, we also gathered under the platform and we opened the space for companies to know about the tenders, the existing tenders. And they can actually direct the company to the relevant tender so they can apply, which opens the door for local companies to compete internationally on tenders that they usually didn't know about.
The same for opportunities, whether the opportunities are events, workshops, exchange programs, and so on. So we have last year we have more than 200 opportunities published on the platform. This is an example of they're divided by location, by sector, by targeted business as well, and development partner.
So all this effort was done to collate all these opportunities. Not only this, but most of these opportunities were only available in English. The platform is English and Arabic which opened the door for the local private sector to also participate in these opportunities. Also, it helped that partners to access the type of businesses that needed the most, the service. But maybe they couldn't reach them because of the language barrier or other type of barriers.
In addition to this, there is a section on the latest news and success stories. Also, there's a questionnaire where it can guide the company to match its needs with the best fitting financial service or capacity building activity.
And then it provides after the company fills the questionnaire, it provide it's with the best fitting service. And then we get this request with also development partner and the company, whether they actually have benefited at the end from the service or not.
Lastly, we built a chatbot, AI powered chatbot, in order to ease the interaction with the platform. So this, for example, a start up asking about how can they benefit from the platform. And then it's already interacting directly with using like a model similar to ChatGPT.
One important thing is also the platform has prevented any fraud or any misinformation, because there's so many activities happening. And there's so many fraudulent activities happening in the name of the FIs, whether they provide the financial service or so on. All that information that were gathered or published on the platform are validated by the partners and are done in the the platform itself was done and the development of the platform and the services provided was done in consultation with the private sector. So this is the methodology we used.
Some coming soon features, there will be a matchmaking between the government, different partners, it can be B2B, B2G. There will be a tracker with all the deals. All the financial deals that have been assigned between the development partners and the companies in order to track which sectors are getting updates and so on. There is a directory of all the reports, publications that are everywhere. But they're not gathered under one area.
So these are all these features will be up and running on the platform in the next couple of months.
To wrap it up, I think this is the potential points in today's discussion. We as the Government of Egypt are happy to collaborate with any other entity in order to think together on how we can cooperate and expanding the platform given the information is already there. And most of the information is relevant to any other country. We're happy also to have collaboration with partners that might not have presence in Egypt but interested to expand to Egypt and local private sector. We're happy to support in this as well.
Finally, we look forward to enhance multistakeholder discussions on how, this platform can evolve further and benefit a greater number of companies, especially in our region.
I will leave you with the QR code if you would like to have a look on the platform. I'm looking forward to discussing with you about the platform and the private sector engagement in general. Thank you so much.
>> MAHITAB ASSRAN: Thank you, tamer, for the presentation. It's an impressive platform, the first of its kind I would say in the region and maybe in the world, connecting the private sector with development partners who previously would not be able to access such opportunities.
So I can start with the first question with you, Tamer. How do you HAFIZ, as a revolutionary platform, how does it leverage these digital solutions to provide the private sector in Egypt, specifically underserved sectors and underserved regions with opportunities from Africa and from the world?
>> TAMER TAHA: Thanks for your question. Actually, like Egypt and the Egyptian private sector have a lot of opportunities, potential to expand to the African region, especially in sectors we know Egyptian competitors are competitive in like construction, manufacturing, and so on. Yet, there was a challenge on who to talk to in Africa or in any other country.
And we worked with some development partners in terms of getting more information about the opportunities and the need for, let's say, projects to be supported or implemented by companies, by private sector in general. And I show one example, which is the project in Grenada. The idea is to just find the right partner who has the right information, try to put the information in a language that can be understood by the local business, and inform the local business in some way that this is the project, and this is the potential financing for the project available from the development partner and connecting the dots.
I think it's always a matter of a gap, informational gap and financial gap. So the beauty of the platform it has filled in both gaps. So when you visit the platform, you'll find a list of projects. But also a list of financial entities who are available and who would support the implementation of the project, whether in terms of guarantees, whether in terms of financing the project and having tenders or companies can apply for the tender, and it's almost guaranteed. Financing's almost guaranteed.
In a nutshell, I think what we did, the information was there. We gathered the information in a well structured way so that the companies can benefit from it and encourage also inform the companies about the existence of such platform. We saw a lot of companies for the first time they knew the existence of financial instruments, the existence of such opportunities, it helped them expand more broadly and more regionally. And the benefit from the existing tools.
>> MAHITAB ASSRAN: That's fantastic. From the other side of the table, we have Manicia Gardezi representing a development partner that uses the HAFIZ platform. Here it's interesting to hear the other side. My first question to you is. How do you feel like HAFIZ platform has better served you as development partner
The second question would be, how do you think such a platform can guarantee equal access to all levels of business, small large, located in a big city, located in a small, rural village?
>> Thanks a lot. For us as GIZ is was important to enable access actually to smaller and medium sized companies since the development sector a lot of same and similar players. The it's often a dozen of them. And the big ones like MacKenzie are using the bidding and tender situation of development companies. So in the end of the day for us it was predominantly the idea behind of this match making platform to enable access and equal access actually to a lot of smaller players in the bigger field of development cooperation.
And I think this is very much also the case, if we're speaking about all the six different sectors in development cooperation. If it's education or we're speaking about digitalisation or support of the private sector but also energy and climate, all the different sectors often are in the hand of a dozen development consulting agencies.
For this reason we think this has got a two fold perspective of supporting the countrywide or Africa wide even business market.
On the one side you're supporting small and medium enterprises, which would normally never understand about the existence even of such a development cooperation and all the financed platform or financed projects because they normally never get in touch with this sector.
On the other side you also enable and access of also a sustainable kind of facility of opening this market to a various setup of smaller start ups, for instance. We saw start ups which actually never cooperated with development actors. For this reason now they entered the market. And we can foster innovation in a much bigger size also in our development projects.
I think it's like a very perfect win/win situation for both sides of the party.
>> Thank you Manicia, our third question is to Mr. Allan Ananura, our virtual participant. Can we see him on the screen? Allan, could you turn on your camera? We should be able to see you. Before I ask you the question, I want to make sure that the participants here can see you. We hear you but we still cannot see you.
>> ALLAN ANANURA: I switched it on. I don't know.
>> MAHITAB ASSRAN: Let's give the technical team a minute. I can start with the question, speaking, Manicia, of small and medium enterprises and small start ups, my question to you yes, Allan, we see you in the top corner.
>> ALLAN ANANURA: Yes. A pleasure.
>> MAHITAB ASSRAN: We can almost see you now. Almost. So speaking of small, medium enterprises, your platform connects start ups, small and medium enterprises in east and southern Africa to opportunities in the region. If you can tell us more about this initiative. Also, if you can share with us a success story about how the start ups have collaborated together. Finally, we see you on screen. Go ahead.
>> ALLAN ANANURA: It's a pleasure to join from Uganda. Good afternoon to you all. Yes, straight to the question. Iventure has been able to connect (Audio breaking up) a start up called (Speaking non English language) to opportunities to southern Africa in Botswana and southern Africa, to be specific. Some of the issues that we've faced, of course, barriers to entry and a lack of acceptance into the community with government support and that type of thing, which has been tremendous challenge for us.
However, we've tried to address it through, number one, digitising the services and trying to work remotely, which doesn't nearly cut it as much as a physical interaction would do. But, yes, we've had success with (?) which offers future trainings to young people. The feature field trainings are marketable jobs that they get to access as soon as they finish these courses that are offered through Marifassa. That's one success we've had. Thank you. Hello?
>> MAHITAB ASSRAN: Can you hear us?
>> ALLAN ANANURA: Yes, yes, I can hear you.
>> MAHITAB ASSRAN: All right. I have another question to you, Allan. Now Africa as a continent has various levels of infrastructure. Not all countries even within the same country are the same. How do you think digital infrastructure as well as physical infrastructure, so how do you think such digital solutions and digital platforms like iventure, I mean, if you can give us a minute and explain it to the audience, how do you think such platforms overcome these obstacles of lack of infrastructure sometimes and reach these underserved communities?
>> ALLAN ANANURA: Yes, that's a beautiful question. I'm sure even HAFIZ has faced since launched. How we've been how we've been able to overcome these challenges, number one, to use low level realtime tech, that means you get to post these opportunities on the platforms where these entrepreneurs are even in their leisure. For instance, Facebook, a lot of these entrepreneurs in Uganda specifically and East Africa are on Facebook. So one where we've been able to overcome that is to put these opportunities there. But we've also been able that is essentially leveraging technology. But we've also been able to use things like WhatsApp, which we used to broadcast these opportunities to start ups and SMEs.
So it's the leveraging of technology, which even it needs low level penetration, at least once a week somebody will be able to get access to Wi Fi or Internet access. Maybe not daily, but somewhere somehow they will get access to this information once we they get on to social media even in the lowest of the low Internet penetrating places. Thank you.
>> MAHITAB ASSRAN: Thank you, Allan. My next question is, you told us there's a new feature that's going to be added to HAFIZ, a matchmaking feature. Can you tell us more about this feature?
>> TAMER TAHA: After launching, we see a lot of requests especially from the private sector and also other governments, especially in Africa that they want to (Audio breaking up) looking for partnership with the private sector, whether as inventors or (Audio breaking up) the partnership and so on. On the own side, sometimes the government is looking to engage with the private sector not as a service provider but as a partner who cannot necessarily (?) the project but a certain project with expertise or the in kind contribution and so on. In order to enhance the engagement and dialogue between the different whether the government partners, the private sector, or development partners are partnerships between the government and the private sector. We're happy with this business matchmaking hub where any partner can think of an idea and a project. And they explain exactly what this project is about and what kind of partnership they're looking for.
Are they looking for a financial partner who can finance and provide financing to the project? Are they looking for a government partner to implement the project, especially for startups, they have a certain technology to have implemented by the government and (Audio breaking up) and so on. Different types of partnerships and this matchmaking hub should be able to from one side list what kind of requests exists, where they're coming from, the companies or coming from the government and so on.
And what is the metrics, what is the size of the project? Which sector? If I'm a company and I'm looking for a certain product and a certain sector, I can see a list of projects in my sector. It's all about creating a platform for venture partnerships and potential dialogue. It's all about also getting the information gap also.
>> MAHITAB ASSRAN: Thank you, Tamer. This is addressed to Manicia and Allan, if we can get him back on the screen.
So maybe Manicia, if you can maybe first start, there's (Audio breaking up) legislative obstacles are steps still to be taken in order to better support intra African trade and investment. In your opinion, what more, in terms of regulation could be done to support private sector enterprises regardless of their size?
>> MANICIA: Thanks a lot from the question. From a development perspective and a development partner, for us it's quite interesting to have for sustainable situation here. For this we basically need more mutual agreements. For instance, on e signature, we think that the detailing signature or e signature is an absolute way forward for a more sustainable cooperation on a bilateral level but also on a regional level for different trade companies and also for different consulting agencies but also all the players from a general perspective. From a very, very clear legislation perspective, the government needs to be on board. And the governments basically need to have a mutual it recognition of their own different e signatures in order to facilitate more trade opportunities for these small, medium, and large sized business entrepreneurs.
So for this reason, I think this is like one of the prerequisites if we're speaking about a pan African perspective from platform logics and also for E*Trade in general, this would basically be my first suggestion.
>> MAHITAB ASSRAN: Thank you. Allan, I think some of your partners and beneficiaries have had some experience actually attempting e signature. So can you tell us more about your perspective?
>> ALLAN ANANURA: Yes. For sure, an e signature would take us a long way, push the needle, if you like, in the right way to achieve scaleability. Because in my sector, which I'm most familiar with, I deal with a lot of start ups which are characterized by, number one, the ability to scale and scale far away. Entry into new markets has been a big hurdle for us as entrepreneurs who would like to enternew territories.
Issues of cultural norms that you have to understand, for instance, if I was to come and start selling in Egypt, there are cultural norms I would need to first understand as an entrepreneur. So when these other nontariff barriers, like market entry restrictions, get in the way, it becomes quite a problem. Again, we've faced that in South Africa where entrepreneurs, even have a hard time getting a Visa from Uganda getting into South Africa, just to start the conversation of understanding the culture.
S that has been quite a bit of a problem. Yet, conversely, just neighboring Kenya. Kenyans can get into South Africa without a Visa. So there's a bit of an issue. And yet, if this e signature was made available, then maybe we wouldn't need Visas and all these issues. And it would ease market entry and growth for sure. SMEs and start ups who would like to scale and explore these new markets. Yes, those are my thoughts.
>> TAMER TAHA: I think there is a huge opportunity for local platforms to connect together. Allan mentioned we're discussing it also on a national level, in terms of our start up policies. How to have sort of a soft landing. Programs where entrepreneurs from network and know more about the environment in Egypt, how they can have incentives to expand technologies or partner with local start ups in Egypt. And I think it's all about the trust. It's all about the trust and access to information. And I think having such platforms, whether, even if they're digital in the beginning, but they can create long lasting relationships from that would actually enhance the inter African trade. Because we need not to (Audio breaking up) infrastructure especially in the sectors that can be expanded fast like startups and technologies.
>> MAHITAB ASSRAN: Thank you, Tamer. I think we'll wrap up this part of our session. We now have an interactive exercise to do together. We would like to hear from our audience. Yes. We would like to hear from our audience your view on this topic. If you can share your screen and the QR code. Thank you for your support and moderating online, Mariam. Thank you. Fantastic.
So we have a QR code here. If you would like to scan it. There's three or four questions that you can answer, help us participate. The first question, I'll read it allowed to you. What do you see as the main barriers to cross border collaboration with regards to the private sector in Africa? The first answer, the first choice is legislation, infrastructure, lack of connectivity, or another option? We can't view the other answers. Okay. All of the above.
Seems like legislation and infrastructure. Answers are still coming in. Okay.
While we can't see others. Let's go with infrastructure. Okay.
Next question, how can digital platforms improve the investment climate in Africa? We have three options of south south collaboration, mobilization of funds, and fostering innovation. And other. Answers are coming in. South south collaboration. Should
Should we move to the third question? So the third question is, which stakeholders or sectors need support bridging the gap to their relevant opportunities with the aim or further development and growth? Civil Society, traditional industries, agriculture, or other?
We have 100% on traditional industries. Very clear choice. All right. Thank you, Mariam. We have competing starting with agriculture. We'll give it a minute for more answers to come in.
I think we still have a winner, traditional industries.
Okay. So to wrap up this part of the session, are there any questions to our panelists? Allan, also turn on your camera if anyone wants to ask you a question.
Also, if you want to go ahead and enter your questions in the chat, I can ask if anyone wants to unmute and ask a question. You can type your answers directly.
We have a question here. If you can introduce yourself. Go ahead and take my mic if you wish.
>> AUDIENCE: It's okay now. Thank you very much. I'm from Egypt. Thank you very much for the presentations. HAFIZ sounds like a wonderful platform. (Audio breaking up) start up ecosystem. I was wondering if HAFIZ also incorporates opportunities that are provided by venture capitalists or angel investors or is it on a separate platform? My other question is (Audio breaking up) information is very uniquely. There's the challenge, as you mentioned, of making the (Audio breaking up) I was wondering if in collaboration with GIZ through a media campaign some targeted, especially in the rural areas of Egypt to make SMEs aware of this platform? Thank you.
>> TAMER TAHA: Thanks for your questions. The first question, as I mentioned, the development partners play an important role in the start up ecosystem whether piloting investments, invest in Egyptian startups or capacity building and also provide knowledge about certain sectors.
What we do with HAFIZ all the services, whether financial or capacity building divided by type of beneficiary and there's also (?) startups. They can check what type of financing or what type of opportunities is available. Around 90% of the opportunities are startups (?) because they are the ones that need the most in terms of capacity building.
Your second question which is what we're going to do in 2025. We're going to have it across the country in partnership with business associations, chambers of commerce, and all governments will have a big media campaign. Because we recognise that not everybody knows about the platform. And once they know, they say, why didn't I know about it before? Adding to this, we also heard from the participants or the users of the platform. They said, okay, I have checked the tender or I applied for this opportunity, but I didn't I wasn't accepted. Another bigger company or a company with more experience competed with me and they got the contract or the financial what we're going to do, in addition to awareness, we're going to work on capacity building with businesses on how to (Audio breaking up) and how to write a proposal that would be of interest for the development partner to support. This will be done next year. We have a plan for this. Hopefully, the ecosystem, especially for startups.
>> MAHITAB ASSRAN: For online participants, I know there's an issue with the audio now. We're working on it. But if you want to send us your questions in the chat, I can get it out to our speakers. We'll give it a few minutes.
If any of our participants here have any questions. All right. Then thank you to our speakers. Thank you, Allan, for joining us from Uganda and for your valuable insights.
>> ALLAN ANANURA: Thank you for having me. It's been a real pleasure. I invite anyone who would like to partner in accessing East Africa market to reach out to you and then maybe you will be able to connect them.
>> MAHITAB ASSRAN: Yes, for sure. Thank you, Manicia, and thank you, Tamer, for your time. Thank you for your insights. It was a pleasure having you. We thank you for our audience.
>> ALLAN ANANURA: Thank you, all. Bye