By the President of the Top 50 Women Forum The world is living through a hinge moment. Economic rules are being rewritten, technology is redrawing maps of power, and artificial intelligence is advancing at a pace no previous innovation has matched. Global estimates suggest that AI alone could add around $15.7 trillion to the world economy by 2030—roughly a 14% uplift in global GDP compared to a world without AI. That is not a technical footnote; it is a warning label on the future: those who do not enter the age of AI now will find themselves outside the growth equation tomorrow. Amid this global shift, Egypt stands before a rare opportunity: to reposition itself not on the margins of the digital economy, but at its heart—by investing in high-skill human capital, especially in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and artificial intelligence, and by placing women not at the periphery of this story, but at its core. From my position as President of the Top 50 Women Forum, I do not see this as merely another phase of economic reform. I see it as a moment in which the rules of who leads, who competes, and who creates value are being written again from scratch. That is why the Forum, in partnership with Nile University, is launching a national summit on 13–14 December and, more importantly, a national alliance around STEM and AI. This alliance is not built on tokenism, quotas, or symbolic representation, but on a simple, demanding premise: real empowerment is not granted, it is earned through competence and performance. Opportunities should be open to everyone; outcomes must be decided by merit alone. A New Economy Built on Creativity, Knowledge, and Technology This alliance is not emerging in a vacuum; it is born into a very specific Egyptian economic context. Over the past few years, the information and communications technology (ICT) sector has quietly become one of the few industries that continues to grow even when the wider economy comes under pressure. Official data show ICT's share of Egypt's GDP rising from around 3.2% a few years ago to roughly 5.8% in 2023/24, with an official target of 8% by 2030. Real growth in the sector has outpaced overall GDP by a wide margin, with ICT expanding at double-digit rates while aggregate growth has, at times, hovered near 2–3%. In plain language: when the wider economy slows, the digital economy has been one of Egypt's main sources of resilience and recovery. This is not coincidental: an economy built on raw materials and low-cost labour is vulnerable by design. An economy built on code, data, design, and problem-solving may be volatile, but it is also scalable and competitive. The true question is not whether Egypt can "join" this economy. The question is: who will be equipped to lead it from within? Egyptian Women: A Vast Educational Force in Search of an Equivalent Leadership Track At the centre of this economic transformation stands a powerful, often overlooked player: Egyptian women in STEM. Year after year, Egypt's education system produces thousands of female graduates in STEM fields. National and international studies indicate that women account for roughly 47–48% of graduates in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics in some cohorts—an impressive figure that surpasses many countries with similar income levels. Yet something breaks in the transition from lecture halls to labour markets. Women represent nearly half of STEM graduates, but only around 38% of the STEM workforce. The pipeline is strong at the educational stage and visibly weaker at the employment and leadership stages. This is not a problem of talent, effort, or ambition; it is, fundamentally, a systems problem. The Gap Between Lecture Halls and the Boardroom Is a System Gap, Not a Talent Gap What we teach and what we actually employ do not align. There is a disconnect between: * how programmes are designed, * how internships and practical training are structured, * how universities are linked (or not linked) to companies, * how innovation ecosystems and incubators are built, * and how opportunities are distributed in a digital economy that rewards speed, adaptability, and specialisation. The result is a narrow bottleneck between classroom seats and leadership seats. Students—especially young women—may have the grades, the projects, and the potential. What they often lack is a clear, competitive path from university to meaningful technical roles, and from there into positions of real influence. The national alliance we are launching is aimed precisely at this bottleneck: it is designed to connect learning to leadership and skills to the real economy. STEM and AI: Not a Luxury, but a National Asset When we speak about STEM and AI in Egypt, we are not talking about a fashionable niche or an elite club. We are talking about the main axis of future value creation. AI is no longer just a single technology—it is an infrastructure of infrastructures. It spans: * mathematical models, * data engineering, * cloud architectures, * chip design, * user interfaces, * cybersecurity, * regulation and governance. It is embedded in finance, manufacturing, logistics, healthcare, education, media, and public services. The question is not whether AI will touch Egypt's economy; it already is. The question is: will Egypt be a passive consumer of imported systems, or an active producer and regional exporter of digital solutions? To be the latter, STEM and AI must be treated as strategic national assets, not optional extras. The Global AI Race: Power Is Being Measured in Models, Not Just in Missiles Globally, the countries that are pouring resources into AI and STEM today are the same countries expected to dominate the economic and political landscape tomorrow. The United States leads AI investment, with the private sector alone injecting hundreds of billions of dollars into AI ventures, and the federal government committing vast sums to research, infrastructure, and strategic programmes. China is building a parallel ecosystem, defined by dense clusters of patents, research hubs, and sovereign funds dedicated to AI. The European Union has announced packages of hundreds-of-billions-of-euros to close the gap with the US and China and to construct its own "digital sovereignty." Across Asia, countries like Singapore and South Korea are weaving AI directly into their strategies for education, innovation, and industry, while in our own region, the UAE and Saudi Arabia are moving fast to position themselves as AI hubs through data centres, open-source models, and massive national AI programmes. None of these governments treat AI as a mere technical file. They treat it as a question of economic and technological sovereignty. In that context, it would be a strategic error for Egypt to see itself as only a market for imported tech. With its demographic weight, educational base, and geographic position, Egypt's natural role is to become a producer of knowledge, a regional exporter of digital services, and a country able to build and own its platforms. But this role will not be secured by declarations. It must be built through a competitive ecosystem that starts in universities and extends across the entire labour market. An Alliance That Connects Universities and Private Sector—and Links Skills to Real Economy The design of the national alliance—and of the 13-14 December summit at Nile University—is intentionally practical. The aim is not to add another conference to the calendar, but to engineer a pathway where a female STEM student can: * attend a workshop on AI and data science led by practitioners, * present her project in a real innovation challenge, * receive feedback from industry experts, * meet companies that are actually hiring for technical roles, * and plug into a network of women leaders who have already navigated this terrain. In other words, the event is structured as a micro-ecosystem of the future: competitive, demanding, connected, and focused on outcomes. The alliance is there to build a landscape of fair competition—one that removes unjust barriers but does not dilute standards. In this view, empowerment is not a compensatory mechanism for weakness; it is the unleashing of suppressed strengths. It is not a number in a report, but a long-term leadership project. Not a reserved seat on a committee, but an earned position in the value-creation engine of the economy. Competitive Empowerment: Dismantling Barriers Without Lowering the Bar This is why we speak of competitive empowerment. The goal is not to shield anyone—women or men—from competition. The goal is to guarantee access to the arena, and then let skills, effort, and innovation decide the outcomes. In practice, this means: * scholarships and training programmes that are open but demanding, * innovation challenges where ideas are judged on technical merit and real-world relevance, * recruitment pipelines that look beyond "who fit the old pattern" to "who can do the job best," * incubators and accelerators that support founders because their models are sound, not because their profiles are symbolic. For women in STEM, this is especially critical. Real empowerment is not about being "added" to the story as a footnote. It is about being recognised as co-authors of the future. The Technical Core: Skills for a World That Will Not Wait At the heart of this vision lies a very concrete technical agenda. We are talking about building specific capabilities, such as: * understanding how predictive models are structured and trained, * reading, cleaning, and shaping large datasets instead of just consuming dashboards, * grasping the principles of machine learning and where it fails, * navigating cloud and high-performance computing environments, * integrating security and privacy by design into systems, * and translating all of the above into products, services, and processes that people will actually use. We are also talking about changing the student–technology relationship. The student—especially the female STEM student—must move: * from passive user to active designer and developer, * from job seeker to potential company founder, * from waiting for a "placement" to crafting a career defined by continuous learning and innovation. This is not rhetoric. It is the only realistic way to function in a world where technologies evolve faster than job descriptions can be written. From Lecture Halls to Positions of Technological Influence: A Transition That Demands a New System Looking across the world, a pattern emerges among countries that are actually moving the needle in AI and the knowledge economy. They have all: * reformed their education systems, * redefined what counts as a "core skill," * invested heavily in research and development, * incentivised the private sector to innovate rather than just import, * and protected the time and resources of scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs. The Egyptian alliance around STEM and AI is an attempt to build a local version of that same bridge—with one crucial addition: ensuring that women are not invited "later" as guests, but included from the beginning as equal partners in design, execution, and leadership. The Digital Transformation in Egypt: A Foundation We Cannot Afford to Waste Egypt has already laid important foundations: digital government services, infrastructure for connectivity, an expanding ICT sector, and a clear political discourse around digital transformation. What has been missing is not vision, but a tightly coupled mechanism that connects: * the university bench to the lab, * the lab to the startup, * the startup to the corporation, * and all of that to an ecosystem where women do not have to ask for permission to lead. The summit on 13–14 December is, in my view, not a celebration but a nonverbal contract between the university, the economy, and society. A contract that redefines the place of women not as a "special case" to be managed, but as a core part of the answer to a larger, harder question: How can Egypt secure a meaningful place in the emerging global economic architecture? The Future Is Not Built on Slogans, but on the Capacity to Create Value The future begins now—not because a date has been circled on a calendar, but because we have chosen a new direction for empowerment. A direction that treats merit as a first and final condition. That sees competition as the shared language between universities and markets. That recognises the Egyptian woman not as a hypothetical future leader, but as a present technical and intellectual force, ready to step forward the moment the system stops holding her back. If we build a fair and demanding ecosystem around her— if we align education with opportunity, if we insist on excellence rather than appearances— she will cross, by her own competence, from classroom seats to leadership seats, from being "promising potential" to being one of the architects of Egypt's digital future.
