“The Youth of Knowledge Forum” is launched in Egypt

Yesterday, the fourth edition of the “Youth of Knowledge Forum”, organized by the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Knowledge Foundation, was launched yesterday in the Cairo University theater, in cooperation with the United Nations Development Program and the Ministry of Youth and Sports, through the Youth Knowledge Office, and under the patronage of the Egyptian Prime Minister, Dr. Mustafa Madbouly, and the activities of the forum will be held this year under the slogan “Knowledge and Human Development Economy”, with wide international and Arab participation.

The forum was opened in the presence of the Minister of Youth and Sports, Dr. Ashraf Sobhi, along with a number of ministers and dignitaries, headed by Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Health and Population, Dr. Khaled Abdel Ghaffar, Minister of Culture, Dr. Ahmed Fouad Hano, and Minister of Parliamentary and Legal Affairs, Counselor Mahmoud Fawzi.

The opening session also witnessed the presence of the executive director of the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Knowledge Foundation, Jamal bin Huwairb, President of Cairo University, Dr. Mohammed Sami Abdel Sadiq, and the director of the knowledge project in the United Nations Development Program, Engineer Hani Turki, in addition to a group of partners and experts, where they saw a set of artistic and lyrical performances from the presentation of the “Barchen” band.

The Minister of Youth and Sports stressed that Egypt’s hosting of the fourth version of the forum reflects the Egyptian state’s commitment to investing in people and building its capabilities, noting that the knowledge economy has become the backbone of any modern development process.

He added that «the forum is an active platform for dialogue and the manufacture of youth policies, which is a model for what the relationship between government institutions and youth in the era of digital and cognitive transformation».

For his part, Jamal bin Huwairb expressed his happiness at the return of the forum to Cairo, after the success of the edition of last year, stressing that the empowerment of Arab youth represents a basic pillar in the institution’s strategy.

For his part, the director of the knowledge project in the United Nations Development Program stressed that the biggest challenge facing the world today is not in the lack of jobs, but rather in the widening gap of the skills required to keep pace with digital transformation and artificial intelligence.

After the opening, the first session entitled “The Economy of Knowledge and Human Development”, which was moderated by the Assistant Minister of Youth and Sports for Strategic Affairs and Information, a member of the Technical Secretariat of the Ministerial Group for Human Development, Mustafa Magdi, where she discussed the importance of formulating a comprehensive vision of the knowledge economy and the role of Egyptian development policies in supporting this trend.

The activities included a second session entitled “Drafting development policies in the era of knowledge economy”, moderated by the director of the Egyptian Knowledge Youth Office, Fathi Imad, and centered on ways to develop public policies, in line with global transformations in the field of knowledge and innovation.

The Minister of Youth and Sports, Minister of Culture, Executive Director of the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Foundation for Knowledge, and President of Cairo University participated in the session, where they reviewed the future Egyptian trends to enhance the knowledge economy, stressing the need to invest in human capital, and the integration of roles between the state and institutions to achieve knowledge -based development, as the first day of the forum included six specialized discussion sessions that dealt with multiple issues, most notably Cognitive economics strategies in Egypt, the role of international institutions in building an incubating environment for knowledge, shift in education to meet the requirements of the times, as well as artificial intelligence as a development of development, and the impact of false information on the economy and society.

The sessions witnessed a wide participation of an elite group of executives and experts such as “Microsoft”, “Uber” and “Blocks 17”, along with prominent intellectual leadership and academy.