Egypt has won three board seats in the International Council for Small Business (ICSB) in last week's elections held in the council's this year conference in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Ahmed Othman won the first vice president seat along with the membership of the ICSB executive office, Amr Abu Al Azm for the vice president for micro finance seat, and Ahmed Shalaby for the vice president for special projects seat. The election also resulted in the winning of new members from Finland, U.S., Indonesia, China, and Argentina. Founded in 1956, the International Council of Small Business is a non-profit organisation based in Washington devoted to continuing management education for entrepreneurs and small business. The council holds regular meetings and conferences to exchange knowledge and formulate policies and strategies on the development of small and micro enterprises globally. According to Othman, the ICSB elections showed the world's appreciation of Egypt's efforts in areas of entrepreneurship, small and micro-sized projects backed by the initiatives launched by authorities in the country last year aimed to achieve sustainable development. The ICSB has agreed to hold its upcoming board meeting in Egypt in next November, Othman said. The council has also approved the establishment of the world's first university to graduate entrepreneurs in Egypt by 2020; while the second university will be in South Korea by 2024, the Egyptian official added. Othman further said that the council would launch a global project to finance entrepreneurs through modern funding techniques and interactive platforms in the first quarter of 2018. The council will also launch a bundle of training programmes at the end of 2017 in six languages; Arabic, English, French, Spanish, Italian, and Korean. The Egyptian government strongly supports entrepreneurship and small and medium-sized projects in the country in the light of the recently-founded Small and Medium Enterprises Development Authority as well as the Egyptian Entrepreneurship Company, Othman said.
