Egypt’s Minister of Planning and Economic Development Hala El-Said has said that future jobs are one of the most important development issues, as labour markets are witnessing a major turning point. This came during her participation in the World Forum for Higher Education and the General Conference of the Islamic World Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (ISESCO) on Tuesday.
She added that the rapid technological developments have greatly affected the production process, the structure of the labor market itself, and the specializations required in the labour market.
The Egyptian planning minister indicated that future jobs require new skills, including artificial intelligence, digital platforms, and robotics, in addition to other behavioral skills related to leadership, critical analysis, and space science skills.
El-Said referred to the report of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which indicated that based on the automation process that is taking place, 14% of jobs are at risk, and 32% of jobs need to intensify efforts to change skills to be able to keep pace with the new labor market.
“So the main issue is to reduce the gap between the requirements of the labor market, which has become highly developed, and the skills offered,” El-Said explained.
El-Said noted that in the absence of skills development, there will be a large gap between the skills of graduates, whose number ranges from 800,000 to 900,000 annually, and the requirements of the labor market.
El-Said added that the Egyptian economy enjoys a great demographic advantage, as the youth sector from 15 to 29 years represents a large proportion of the population.
On the Egyptian state’s efforts to confront developments and challenges that affect the labor market, El-Said explained that the state’s efforts are divided into several main pillars.
First of which is availability, as Egypt increases investments by 100% annually in universities nationwide.
The second pillar is quality, by improving information infrastructure in Egyptian universities; to develop the educational system in universities, in addition to the new specializations, which are the interdisciplinary specializations between the different faculties. El-Said also referred to the third pillar, which is technical education, explaining that this system has suffered in Egypt over the years.
She said that for the first time in Egypt, there will be sectorial skills and councils that supervise the skills required in each sector, to ensure that graduates are suitable for the labour market.
El-Said added that within the framework of the technical education system; Schools are linked to national projects, noting that some applied schools in industrial zones are linked with the Ministry of Industry.
El-Said stressed that all these efforts changed the mental and societal image of the technical education system, pointing to another system, which is an academy for teachers and technical education that the Ministry of Education and Technical Education is working on, stressing that the teacher is the basis of the educational process.
On the third pillar which is investing in behavioral and leadership skills, El-Said referred to the President’s launch of the National Academy for Training and Rehabilitating Young People in Leadership, which provides a large number of leaders who are trained in many skills for long periods to ensure that they have the leadership skills to lead various institutions.
Concerning digital skills, El-Said explained that future jobs require a very high number of digital and technological skills, which requires the state to invest in this type of program.
And finally, entrepreneurship, El-Said stressed the importance of this pillar with the volume of graduates from the labor market, explaining that investment is made in the demographic advantage so that graduates do not look for jobs, they create jobs for themselves and their colleagues.
