Educate Me Foundation Unveils Bold Plan to Combat Egypt’s Learning Poverty by 2030

Editorial Team

Last updated 7-10-2025

4 min

Educate Me Foundation launched its 2030 strategy "Breaking the Cycle" in Cairo.

The initiative addresses that nearly half of Egyptian children struggle with reading by age ten.

The strategy aims to improve literacy, numeracy, and digital skills for children and mothers.

Community-led planning ensures resilience, while Finnish support boosts credibility in education reform.

The 2030 plan involves concrete goals for students, teachers, parents, and schools.

Educate Me Foundation (EMF) has kicked off its 2030 strategy in Cairo with a bold ambition — to transform education from being a barrier into a bridge out of poverty. Aptly titled “Breaking the Cycle: From Poverty to Prosperity,” the strategy was unveiled during a launch event attended by H.E. Riikka Eela, the Ambassador of Finland, and several notable figures in Egypt’s education and social development scene.

The initiative zeroes in on a sobering reality: around half of Egyptian children can’t read or write proficiently by the age of ten. If that trend continues, nearly 43% could face “learning poverty” by 2030. Those numbers hit hard — especially when you realise that five percent of families already have a child with a disability, increasing their vulnerability even more. It’s a stark reminder that education reform isn’t just about syllabuses and exams; it’s about survival and dignity.

The launch featured a lively panel hosted under the theme *“From Poverty to Prosperity: Education as a Shared Responsibility.”* Participating voices included Shiraz Chakera of UNICEF Egypt, Dr Lamise Negm from the Financial Regulatory Authority, Dr Malak Zaalouk from the American University in Cairo, Heba Iskander of Orascom Construction PLC, and Abdelrahman Nagy representing 3ie in MENA. The discussion, by all accounts, pulled no punches in highlighting both the gaps and the glimmers of hope within Egypt’s education system.

Christine Safwat, EMF’s Executive Director, explained that the new roadmap is essentially built around two core goals: strengthening foundational skills like literacy, numeracy, and digital literacy for children and mothers, while also improving access to quality K–12 education. That involves upgrading schools, boosting teacher capacity, and weaving inclusion into every classroom. She also pointed out concrete benchmarks — reaching 5 million students, training 50,000 educators, engaging 10,000 parents, and supporting 5,000 schools by the end of the decade. Ambitious? Absolutely. But as one panellist quipped, “A little ambition never hurt anyone.”

What I really like about EMF’s approach is how community-led it is. The foundation didn’t just sit in boardrooms drawing up plans — it went out, listened, and co-created with the very people who stand to benefit the most. At Arageek, we’ve often spoken to founders who swear by that method: build *with* people, not *for* them. It’s spot on, really, because buy-in from the ground up makes any social initiative far more resilient.

On the flip side, achieving all this by 2030 will surely be a bit of a faff. Aligning government units, NGOs, and private players isn’t exactly a walk in the park. But with Finland’s well-known expertise in education reform lending moral weight to the launch, the odds seem slightly more encouraging.

Educate Me Foundation has already spent 15 years making steady strides — running community schools, training teachers across 18 Egyptian governorates, and offering consultancy in educational reform. And from what I’ve seen over the years, that kind of staying power doesn’t come by chance; it comes from grit and, well… a genuine belief that classrooms can change lives.

I reckon the 2030 plan will be worth watching closely. The mix of data-driven focus and community energy could actually set a fresh precedent for how education NGOs operate in the region. And if it really helps even a fraction of those millions of children get a fair shot at learning, that’d be something to be chuffed to bits about.

So yes, it’s early days — but the tone has been set. Poverty and education are tangled problems, yet this strategy, if executed well, might just untangle them one thread at a time. And that, in anyone’s book, sounds like a step in the right direciton.

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