EU and Egypt strengthen their research and development relationship

Egypt is to be offered twenty million Euros by the European Union to promote the Research, Development and Innovation (RDI) programme. The programme was established under the EC-EGYPT bilateral Science and Technology Cooperation Agreement. The EU has already invested eleven million Euros in the project.

“Innovation is key to recovery and to building [a] more sustainable economy and society after the crisis,” said Marc Franco, Ambassador of the European Delegation in Egypt. The Euro-Mediterranean Innovation Marketplace – the first of which was held in Heliopolis, Egpyt in late January – is designed to be a communications platform and an information hub for researchers, inventors, academia and industry.

Tarek El-Bagory and Mohamed El-Sayed presented their idea for a testing station for national gas pipelines at the event, and explained that there are challenges concerning innovation in Egypt that the RDI programme needs to address. “We have a patent, but it's local,” the inventors say. “The guarantee for this patent is only in Egypt, not international, like in America.

“In our faculty we study about business engineering and management, but nothing specific for inventions. We need training in invention marketing.”

There are concerns that the Egyptian government should be more instrumental in searching for and supporting ideas. Professor Bahaa Shawky, of the National Research Center in Egypt, who invented a solution for the facilitation of biomass energy release from cellulose-rich plants, claims that he is still waiting for the half a million Egyptian pounds needed from the government for him to build a pilot plant. Such a plant could aid the development of clean, renewable energy in Egypt.

Officials have noted that, thanks to the EU's Seventh Framework (FP7) programme – which has a budget of seven million Euros over seven years – the Egyptian government should have more opportunities to obtain funding for research in the country.

For more information, visit the Euro-Mediterranean Innovation Marketplace website.

Published: Friday, 12th February 2010 by Tom Freeman

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