196.2
Social Enterprises in Egypt:
Towards Building Inclusive Markets and Creating Sustainable Economic Growth
In 2015, the United Nations launched new sustainable goals to change the world to become more inclusive and healthier for everyone. The first item on the UN agenda over the next 15 years is to “end poverty in all its form everywhere”. It is an ambitious, however, doable goal.
Social enterprises, especially in a country like Egypt, are working to achieve this goal by developing inclusive markets that can help in a country where 2% of the population is surviving on $1.25 a day and 18% of the population is surviving on $2.00 US dollars.
This paper will make a significant contribution to exploring how social enterprises ameliorate poverty through the creation of new inclusive markets and critically investigate changes that occurred in Egypt after the 25th of January revolution 2011, where significant socioeconomic and political changes occured.Furthermore, this study aims to make a valuable contribution to policy makers and practitioners alike to reinforce the need for serious actions to make bold changes within subsistence marketplaces that will eventually create a specific public policy agenda for poverty alleviation and educational empowerment within the Egyptian context.
Finally, the crux of this study is to make a theoretical contribution to the growing body of literature about social enterprises as well address the lack of the systematic empirical account of the phenomenon within the Egyptian context.The empirical focus will be conducted on the heart of Cairo, a city that has over 170 informal neighborhoods. Qualitative research methods will be implemented in the form of an in-depth ethnographical study conducted with a social enterprise currently operating in the Manshiet Naser Cairo slum.