A glimpse about SDG 8

In 2015, the United Nations discussed with 195 nations a group of sustainable development goals (SDGs) to change the world to be a better place by finding permanent solutions for many issues facing most of the countries. From these sustainable development goals, SDG 8 “Decent work and economic growth” is tackling the fact that there are many sorts of inequality and there are not enough job opportunities to keep up with a growing labor force, so the SDG8 Decent work and economic growth” is mainly encouraging entrepreneurship and job creation. In order to achieve Egypt’s vision 2030 which focuses on developing the life of all Egyptian people and improving their standard of living in many different aspects of life by economic growth and improving human being’s investment. ~Shahd~
 

Egypt's vision deals with 3 main dimensions which are the social dimension, the environmental dimension and the economic one. This project is more concerned with the economic dimension and its 4 pillars: economic development, knowledge, innovation and scientific research, the Energy sector, and governments Efficiency and Transparency. ~Marina~
 

Egypt has adopted several initiatives launched by The Central Bank to invest in youth power. These initiatives started in 2016 after Egypt’s vision 2030 has turned its attention to help young entrepreneurs to build their startups. The public banks participated in these initiatives by offering loans for youth with low rates of interest that drop to 5%. Following their lead, NGOs came on the scene by offering loans with ZERO interests for youth, such as “lifepreneurs”. Egypt wants to support youth as a part of Egypt’s Vision 2030 because we believe that the real power resides in these young minds. ~Salma Hany~

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Do you know what a startup is and how it affects our economy?

Egypt nowadays is facing the youth bulge, which means that the young people are the more percentage in the population.  This leads to high unemployment rates between the age of 16 to 24. The youth turned to start startups. The reason for that is to gain money and to start their own businesses.  The United Nations is trying to solve this issue of unemployment by setting sustainable development goals.

The startups are small projects that start with an amount of 5 thousand EGP and represent 70% of our economy. The startups and creative arts startups represent a sword that fights that high unemployment rate. It also increases the GDP and the economic growth rates. Egypt has a high role and highest numbers of investments in the Middle East and North Africa. In the year 2019, the new investments related to the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) based startups were about 564 investments. These investments amounted to $704 Million in total.   ~Salma Mohsen