The Definitive Guide to Living in the Capital , Cairo , Egypt

Who doesn’t know MIT? Probably very few people, because it’s currently ranked the number one university worldwide, according to QS World University Rankings 2019! If you know MIT, then you may have heard about the MIT Inclusive Innovation Challenge.

According to their website, it is a competition that awards over one million dollars in prizes to future entrepreneurs in four categories that represent the solution types necessary to build an economy that works for all in the digital era: Skills Development & Opportunity Matching, Income Growth & Job Creation, Technology Access, and Financial Inclusion. This year, we are thrilled to announce that among the 60 participating teams, from five global regions, two Egyptian organisations, Taskty and Forasna, were chosen as finalists under the category of Skills Development & Opportunity Matching, along with 10 other competitors in the African region alone. Moreover, they are the only entities from the MENA region to take part in this prestigious international contest.  

The site states, “At MIT, we believe that inclusive innovation – the use of technology to generate increased economic opportunity for moderate and low-income earners – is an imperative with a tight deadline. The question we should be asking ourselves at this historic moment isn’t ‘what is technology going to do to our economy and society’, but rather ‘what will we do with technology?’”

To answer their question, let’s explore the nature of the lucky Egyptian participants and how they efficiently utilised technology. First, we have Taskty. Founded in 2012, it is the first online service for household chores, according to its Facebook page, for the residents of Cairo and Tanta. You can check out our detailed feature on Taskty’s services here.

As for Forasna, it’s also the first of a kind, which specialises in granting “genuine job opportunities” by hiring people of all classes, skills, and educational backgrounds, but mainly blue-collar jobs. So far, it has helped over 3,500 companies in recruiting more than 30,000 employees all over Egypt. To sign up, you can check out more details on their social media page.

According to Menabytes, the teams will pitch their solutions live to a selection panel of regional innovation experts. Twenty regional winners, four from each region, will then proceed to the Global Grand Prize Gala at MIT on November 21, where $250,000 will be awarded to each of four Grand Prize Winners. Let’s keep our fingers crossed, and hope that Taskty and Forasna will be one of those 20 lucky winners!