Ashraf Abo Arafe
12 December – Emma Wade-Smith, Her Majesty’s Trade Commissioner for Africa, concluded a four-day visit in Egypt focused on expanding the trade and investment links between the UK, Egypt and the African continent, including supporting young entrepreneurs.
This is Her Majesty’s Trade Commissioner to Africa’s first visit to Egypt in her role, which was created in June 2018 to foster the UK’s trade and investment links across Africa. She will be a keynote speaker at the Africa 2018 – Business for Africa Forum and the Intra-African Trade Fair during her stay.
The UK is committed to supporting entrepreneurship in Egypt, including through a 47m EGP programme to support social enterprise, and Emma Wade-Smith was a keynote speaker at Flat6Labs Demo Day in Cairo, where she highlighted the importance of small businesses in creating economic opportunities and jobs.
During her visit, she met with His Excellency Minister of Petroleum, Tarek El-Molla, to discuss current petrochemical & refinery projects with the use of the UK export finance funding.
Emma Wade-Smith, Her Majesty’s Trade Commissioner for Africa said: ‘The UK is proud to be working with Egypt and across Africa to invest in strategic, job-creating sectors that will let economies thrive. Investing in young people and enterprise is at the heart of this, and we’ve seen in Egypt how bringing together UK expertise and Egyptian talent has yielded fantastic results. Across Africa, we are working to build partnerships and collaborations between the UK and other countries, and between the public and the private sector, as we work towards our aim of becoming the largest G7 investor in Africa by 2022.”
