Hisham Okasha, president of the National Bank of Egypt (NBE), and Khalid Abdul Ghaffar, Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research, signed a cooperation protocol aimed at increasing the bank’s support of scientific research and foreign study scholarships worth EGP 300m funded by NBE over three years, for the sake of developing human capabilities and skills.
Okasha and Minister of Planning and Administrative Reform Hala El Saied also signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) aimed at providing educational and training programmes and foreign study scholarships and grants to obtain master’s degrees in entrepreneurship by the ministry to raise the efficiency of the administrative apparatus of the state. This will be funded with EGP 200m over two years.
According to Okasha, NBE is keen to play its role in the areas of social responsibility, as part of the bank’s policy to support all elements of the educational process, with particular attention to the human element, and to develop skills as one of the most important factors for the success of the education system and achieving sustainable development and economic growth in society.
He added that the protocol signed with the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research will cover all disciplines that require the dispatch of external missions, which helps in building distinguished scientific experts in various fields of higher education. Regarding the memorandum of understanding signed with the Ministry of Planning, Okasha said that it will contribute 100 scholarships annually to obtain a Master of Entrepreneurship degree, in cooperation with the University of Cambridge and the Faculty of Economics and Political Science at Cairo University, to bridge the development gaps and meet the national priorities of the state.
Finally, Okasha also said that the bank’s contribution to social responsibility exceeded EGP 2.5bn over the past five years, including EGP 850m offered to support the educational process in all stages and their elements.
