Egyptian-German relations have never been better, Egyptian Ambassador to Germany Badr Abdel-Aty told Al-Ahram Weekly recently during an interview at the Egyptian Embassy in Berlin. According to Abdel-Aty, the two nations, each pivotal in its region, fully understand their common interests. Egypt needs Germany, a leading member of the European Union, as a main source of technology and investments and a key partner in its modernisation. Germany needs Egypt's vital role as a cornerstone of preserving stability in the Arab and Middle East region. Over the past six decades, Egyptian-German ties have never been as comprehensive as they are today, Abdel-Aty said, since they span fields as various as education to energy and artificial intelligence. Political relations are just as strong. Diplomatic relations between Egypt and Germany date back to December 1957, and over the past five years relations have been boosted by visits to Germany by President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi, the latest of which was in February to take part in the Munich Security Conference. Over the last four years, President Al-Sisi has visited Germany four times while German Chancellor Angela Merkel has come to Egypt twice. During his visits, Al-Sisi made sure to meet senior German business leaders to increase trade and investment. German investments in Egypt currently amount to $7.1 billion. Over 1,000 German companies are operating in Egypt in the fields of petroleum, chemicals, automotive industries, communication, iron and steel, petroleum and gas. One of Germany's biggest investors in Egypt is the multinational conglomerate Siemens. The German company has been building power plants in Egypt since 2015, with deals worth eight billion euros. In the summer of 2018, operations began at the Beni Sweif, Burullus and New Capital power plants. The stations add a total of 14.4 gigawatts (GW) of power generation capacity to Egypt's national grid, enough to supply up to 40 million people with reliable electricity. With this milestone, Siemens has set a new world record for the execution of modern, fast-track power projects in only 27.5 months. A single combined-cycle power plant with a capacity of 1,200 megawatts (MW) typically takes approximately 30 months for construction. According to Abdel-Aty, this speed was possible thanks to strong political will and Egyptian leadership. However, Egypt also hopes German investments will increase further, as they do not reflect the size of Germany as the largest economy in Europe, Abdel-Aty said, and they do not keep pace with the number of opportunities for investments in Egypt. The Egyptian Embassy in Berlin has long gone the extra mile to promote investment in Egypt. Abdel-Aty said he had visited all 16 states in Germany and introduced Egypt's investment law, incentives, guarantees, stability and industrial area in the Suez Canal Zone to decision-makers. Already, he said, many German companies were starting to capitalise on Egypt's strategic location to export to Africa. What could help boost German investments in Egypt are the initiatives taken within the framework of the G20 Compact with Africa (CwA) initiated under the German G20 group presidency to promote private investment in Africa, including in infrastructure. The initiative is demand-driven and open to all African countries. Since its launch in 2017, 12 African countries have joined, including Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea, Morocco, Rwanda, Senegal, Togo and Tunisia. Chancellor Merkel announced in October 2018 a set of incentives designed to boost private investment in Africa, including in Egypt. She promised to make additional government funds available to German companies as insurance against any political and commercial risks in their foreign endeavours. The year before Merkel launched a wider initiative to boost investment in Africa as part of Germany's G20 presidency. In a first concrete attempt to intensify economic cooperation with African countries, Berlin has since taken steps to lower the insurance costs shouldered by domestic small and mid-sized enterprises (SMEs) in trading with regional countries that have signed up to the initiative.
YOUNG PEOPLE: Youth are a cornerstone of Egyptian-German relations, said Abdel-Aty, pointing out that there are several cultural initiatives to bring the youth of the two nations closer. There are also efforts to connect second and third-generation Egyptians living in Germany closer to their homeland, he said. Abdel-Aty stressed the fact that in Egypt there are 25 schools using the German education system. Moreover, many Egyptian students go for their undergraduate degrees to German universities. While some of them stay on or move on to work in global companies, some return and contribute to development in Egypt, he said. There are also educational exchange programmes through the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) in which many Egyptian students study for postgraduate qualifications. German expertise in the area of education should be capitalised on to improve the Egyptian education system. Abdel-Aty said Germany could help Egypt in reforming its elementary, vocational, higher education and postgraduate education. Moreover, there was cooperation to establish an institute for educational excellence and a teacher training academy. He pointed out that the German educational development experience was based upon newly founded private universities for applied sciences that provide highly skilled graduates and workers that meet labour-market demands. During Al-Sisi's visit to Berlin in October 2018, Egypt signed agreements on technical education and university education with Germany. “Currently, we are working on their implementation,” Abdel-Aty said, adding that preparations were underway for an upcoming visit by Minister of Education and Technical Education Tarek Shawki to Germany to carry out the agreements. Egypt is also learning from Germany's dual education system that integrates school-based learning with work-based practice. Germany's vocational education is the best in world, and it has been developed over at least a century, Abdel-Aty said. German investments could play a major role in helping Egypt apply this dual education system, he said, adding that German companies in the energy and petrochemicals sectors such as Siemens would build training schools. The German dual system is in fact already in place in Egypt, since it started in the early 1990s through the Mubarak-Kohl Initiative that introduced a cooperative dual training system (MKI-DS) through an agreement between the German Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development and Egypt's Ministry of Education. According to Abdel-Aty, this initiative has succeeded in increasing the employment rate of young people graduating from technical high schools and their transition from study to work. Egypt is also out to benefit from Germany's experience in recycling waste. Egypt's Prime Minister Mustafa Madbouli visited Berlin last January and had meetings with German companies specialising in trash and waste recycling, including the Berliner Stadtreinigungsbetriebe (BSR), one of the largest waste-management companies in Berlin. According to Abdel-Aty, Egypt has received proposals from different companies in this regard. “We are going to study them and choose what will best suit Egypt,” he said, adding that an Egyptian delegation had paid visits to centres for garbage collection, waste processing and recycling. “We discovered that the recycling system in Germany financed and covered the costs of collection, transportation, processing, packaging, and storage and still made reasonable profits,” he said.
