Egypt's higher education strategy for 2030 focuses on developing new programs that include cybersecurity and artificial intelligence
The higher ed sector is pushing deeper into the tech field: Egypt's higher education sector is deepening and diversifying its offering of tech-related disciplines as it looks to graduate students capable of meeting demands of the job market. This push aligns with Egypt's Vision 2030, which anticipates a job market driven by fields like AI, big data, and automation, but concerns exist about potential job market saturation. This Blackboard explores this educational shift and the balance between equipping graduates with in-demand skills, while ensuring long-term employability.
The government's strategy: With an eye on the evolving job market, Egypt's higher education strategy for 2030 focuses on developing new programs that include cybersecurity and artificial intelligence. According to the strategy, the fields likely to dominate the job market by 2040 include AI, big data, automation, internet of things, self-driving transport, digital economy, space sciences, and nuclear energy.
Remember: The government aims to boost the tech sector's contribution to the GDP from 3.4%currently to 7% over the next six years and nearly triple outsourcing exports to USD 13 bn
The current job market: Software development roles — full-stack developers, software testers,cloud engineers — are the most in demand, accounting for over 58% of the 3.2k job openings offered by IT companies in Egypt, according to a statement (pdf) released by the Information Technology Industry Development Agency last week. These are followed by jobs in IT management (9%), data science and AI (9%), and IT infrastructure (8%).
Meanwhile, on the language front: English is demanded in 49% of jobs offered by call center and service outsourcing centers, followed by German (23%), French (14%), and Italian (13%).
The K-12 sector is catering to these requirements, too: While English is the most widely studied and used foreign language in Egypt, 70% of students in private and international schools take up German as a second foreign language and 30% study French.
Source: Enterprise
