Chapter
Cairo: the mini-MBA in Egypt, since 2021
Peace Through Prosperity’s Egypt chapter began in November 2021, when a former trainer from the Yemen chapter relocated to Cairo and asked whether the mini-MBA could work there too. Within a year it had reached 111 micro-entrepreneurs across five groups and six nationalities.
The record here is compiled from the organisation’s own 2022 Egypt report.
November 2021
How the mini-MBA in Egypt started
Ahmed Ibraheem, a former trainer with Peace Through Prosperity’s Yemen chapter, relocated to Cairo and reached out with a question: could the mini-MBA have the same impact in Egypt that it had had in Yemen? In November 2021, PTP and Ahmed launched the experiment. He orchestrated and delivered the first mini-MBA and its first monthly group coaching workshop on his own. By October 2022, he had built a local team five strong.
The pattern follows the one PTP uses everywhere it starts a new chapter: partner with motivated local people, train and fund them to deliver the mini-MBA themselves, then step back as the team organises itself into a registered, locally funded chapter. As of the 2022 report, the Egypt chapter had applied for Civil Society Organization registration and was, in PTP’s own estimate, some 12 to 18 months from being able to operate independently.
Who it reaches
Refugee communities, and local Cairenes
The Cairo chapter’s participants are drawn from the refugee communities of Sudan, South Sudan, Eritrea, Yemen and Syria living in and around Cairo, alongside local Cairene micro-entrepreneurs. Across its first five groups the mini-MBA in Cairo was delivered to people of six different nationalities, most of them running small businesses from their homes or local markets.
In numbers
The first ten months, to October 2022
micro-entrepreneurs trained and coached
Across five mini-MBA groups.
nationalities
Among them, participants from five refugee communities.
monthly group coaching workshops delivered
Held through the chapter’s first year.
average revenue growth
Compared with participants’ own baseline.
average profitability growth
Compared with participants’ own baseline.
One participant, a Sudanese refugee running a growing handmade-purse business, grew her average monthly revenue by 85% and her profitability by 81% over three months of coaching. Another, a Yemeni refugee building a custom textile and bag business, grew her revenue by just over 50% and her profitability by around 60% over two months. The group coaching workshops became, as in Yemen, more than a learning session: an additional support structure that put participants from different cohorts in touch with each other.
An idea that spread
Bazaars, taken up by two other chapters
The Cairo team’s own contribution to the mini-MBA was encouraging participants to take part in local and regional bazaars: between November 2021 and April 2022, participants from several cohorts exhibited at four different fairs. PTP judged it enough of an improvement to fold into a summer 2022 update to the mini-MBA programme, training the Yemen and Pakistan chapters to run the same kind of event within their own communities.
Where it sits
One of seven chapters
Egypt is one of Peace Through Prosperity’s chapters, alongside Pakistan, Yemen, Tanzania, Türkiye, Jordan and Angola. Its growth figures, 15.43% average revenue growth and 52% average profitability growth across 111 participants, sit inside the wider set the organisation draws on: the headline figure elsewhere on this site, about 18% average revenue growth and 85% average profitability growth, is calculated from 974 digitised participant records across Pakistan and Egypt, 2012 to 2022.
See what the programme looks like today on the mini-MBA page, every cohort by place and date on past programmes, and the fuller founding story on our story.