If we consider education and training priorities in Egypt, several issues become clear: the strategic importance of Egypt in the region, the pivotal role of human capital development in the country in the present context of economic growth, competitiveness and the need for social equity, the complex national environment in terms of multiplicity and fragmentation of key stakeholders, the lack of a coherent comprehensive policy orientation and a clear leadership in the education and training sector, and the need for increased synergy in a country where so many donors are active with large scale programmes.
The ETF intervention strategy in Egypt is inspired by the guidelines formulated in the ETF Mid Term perspective for 2010-13, which are mirrored in the Work Programme 2010. The overall objective for this period is to make vocational education and training a driver for lifelong learning, sustainable development, competitiveness and social cohesion. This will be implemented across three main themes (as described below), in which the ETF will develop its main functions, respecting the recast regulation.
This strategy of intervention builds also on the work carried out by the ETF in Egypt since 2006, with two main objectives that will also be respected for the period 2010-12:

Support the effective and relevant implementation of major EU interventions and policies in the country and region to achieve their goals of systemic impact. This is done at the request of the EC services and includes support to both national and regional programmes where Egypt is involved, as well as the objectives of the European Neighbourhood Policy Instrument (ENPI) as reflected in the ENP Action Plan for Egypt
Develop projects that tackle key strategic “building blocks” for the reform of education and training in order to provide relevant policy advice to the government and to strengthen stakeholder capacity to make policy decisions that can be embedded in the national context. This has been done in the past using a specific approach, bringing key partners together with ETF technical support, to produce concepts and reform proposals adapted to the Egyptian specificities that then can be integrated into an overall strategy for reform.

These two priorities reflect the specificity of the ETF’s role in Egypt:
i) as a European Union agency, in support of EU policies and interventions; ii) as a recognised expert organisation in the field of human capital, especially in vocational education and training, capable of mobilising and bringing together key stakeholders to work on selected policy topics and facilitate dialogue and joint work while providing targeted expertise, exchange of experience and comparison with other countries, and iii) to make a contribution to a coherent human capital development policy starting from key building blocks and building national stakeholders’ capacities to find solutions adapted to the Egyptian context.

Two new additional elements will be crucial for the ETF’s intervention strategy in 2010–12:
Wrapping up initiatives implemented in the previous years, handing them over for political decision and connecting them with new emerging themes
The timing of EU support to the sector, while approaching the end of the TVET programme and the Direct Budget Support in Education and the beginning of a new aid package to be built on the results of the previous interventions.