Egypt, represented by the Egyptian Banking Institute (EBI), won the Country Award for the Middle East and North Africa region from Child and Youth Finance International(CYFI).
The award was granted through the ceremony CYFI organised at the House of Lords, London, for countries that have made significant efforts in the fields of financial literacy and inclusion. The ceremony was held alongside CYFI’s Celebrating CYFI Post-2015 Strategy & Awards, that took place on 9 and 10 December.
On the sidelines of the conference, CYFI held a board meeting, in which it decided to re-elect the EBI as a Board Member for another two-year term, in recognition of the importance of EBI’s role in the board.
Since 2012, the EBI has been following an initiative entitled Shaping the Future, under the patronage of the Central Bank of Egypt (CBE).
This initiative aims at raising financial awareness among all the segments of society, in addition to helping the financial institutions develop their financial products and services that are geared towards the youth and children.
Through the initiative, the EBI held numerous activities aimed at raising financial awareness, in cooperation with 20 partners from ministries, financial, and non-financial institutions. Additional support to these activities was provided by the Ministry of Youth and Sports, the Ministry of Education, the Egyptian Exchange, the Egyptian Financial Supervisory Authority (EFSA), and a number of Egyptian banks, and civil society organisations.
The EBI’s efforts exceed a singular focus on children as it held a number of seminars aiming to raise financial awareness among journalists. The EBI is also working on encouraging banks to develop finacial services for a demograph constituted of children and youth, through holding training workshops for employees in the banking and financial sector.
The EBI is currently preparing to carry out a campaign that aims at raising the financial awareness among public sector employees, in cooperation with VISA.
The EBI held a workshop for the officials responsible for developing curricula at the Ministry of Education, in order to include the best international experiences in the creation of financial education curricula, and the implementation of these standards in Egyptian schools.
According to the EBI’s Executive Director Mona El-Baradei, the EBI’s belief in the importance of the financial literacy in forming a generation capable of making the right financial decisions put Egypt in the forefront regionally, along with its partners’ support.
El Baradei added that the EBI introduced an initiative to form a coordinating committee to put forth a national strategy for the financial literacy in Egypt, in line with numerous countries that did the same worldwide.
This committee includes representatives of the CBE, and EFSA, as well as the Ministries of Finance, Youth and Sports, Education, and Higher Education. In addition, it includes a number of governmental bodies, banks, financial institutions, non-governmental organisations, academics, and donors.
