Enhancing governmental capacity to attract expatriate investments into Egypt
With both their remittances and substantial capacity for investment, the more than 10 million Egyptians residing abroad are an important asset for Egypt’s economy. In recent years, Egyptian policymakers have created a more favourable environment to attract expatriate investment.
In 2020, the General Authority for Investment and Free Zones (GAFI), in cooperation with the Ministry of Immigration and Egyptian Expatriates Affairs, created an Expatriates Unit whose focus is to encourage Egyptian expatriate investment. Accordingly, in partnership with EUDiF, GAFI seeks to further strengthen its expertise in attracting expatriate investment. The action’s design and outputs can be of interest to other investment promotion agencies or government institutions working on expatriate investment.
In partnership with
Programme of activities
With this action, EUDiF aims to enrich GAFI's knowledge on good practices in attracting diaspora investment, and to eventually create a roadmap for the newly established Expatriates Unit with a strong communication and outreach component.
To assess GAFI's objectives, capacities, partners and current product offering in terms of diaspora investment.
To share with GAFI staff relevant practices other investment promotion agencies have implemented.
To flesh out 10 practices on attracting diaspora investment conducted by other investment promotion agencies and stakeholders, including their key features, success factors and challenges.
To define with GAFI the sections and content of the roadmap.
To learn from the successful experiences of the governments of Ireland and Morocco. Based on previous workshops and the benchmark, Ireland and Morocco were selected as comparable examples to the case of Egypt.
To frame the diaspora engagement environment, the financial profile of the product to offer the diaspora and the profile of potential diaspora investors.
To define GAFI's communication objectives that include better understanding how diaspora is engaging in Egypt and their financial profile.
The plan included different diaspora outreach approaches depending on the profile of the diaspora in question.
A test run of elements of the communication plan such as establishing initial contact with diaspora groups through emails, calls and events. The team also ran a survey to collect information about diaspora members interested in investing in Egypt.
The final roadmap consolidates the interim roadmap with results from the communication activities, and were presented by the expert to GAFI staff in a final workshop.
Results
GAFI assessed their capacities at the start and end of the action, showing how the various activities have helped to accelerate their knowledge and practical skills in areas essential to achieving their long-term objectives.
EUDiF actions are designed to plug into a partner's existing vision and/or workplan, in order to help enhance, catalyse, or accelerate initiatives in a way the partner will be able to maintain beyond the end of the action. This is why the focus is on enhancing capacities, rather than providing a finished product on behalf of the partner. No partner ever begins from zero capacities, but the progress made during the course of an action can have a huge impact on its operations.