Gallup set to spur Egypt jobs

Gallup plans a jobs creation institute in Cairo to help stem the region's looming unemployment crisis.

More Egyptians are trying to make ends meet by joining the grey market as formal jobs become more scarce. Jamal Saidi / Reuters

The international polling company Gallup plans to launch a job-creation institute in Egypt in a bid to tackle the country's looming unemployment crisis.

Some 75 million jobs are needed in the Middle East and North Africa in the wake of the Arab Spring, with the current youth unemployment rate standing at 24 per cent, according to the World Bank.

As part of an attempt to stem endemic "unemployment hopelessness" in the Arab world, Gallup plans an initiative to help invigorate the local jobs market.

"We'd like to start an institute for job creation in Cairo that would try to change the conversation in the country from politics to authentic job creation," said Jim Clifton, the chief executive of Gallup.

The centre, set to open next year, would assign mentors to local start-ups who would attempt to encourage a "spirit of entrepreneurship" among local businesses.

Mr Clifton said there needed to be a shift in attitudes towards small businesses and entrepreneurship in the Middle East.

"There needs to be more entrepreneurial heroes. Part of the cultural fabric is that 'it's beneath me to be a small-business person'. But that should be heroic," he said.

Employment experts welcomed the planned move but said tackling unemployment also required political stability and greater government support.

"It is about how the government comes together over the next year or next couple of years," said Radhika Punshi, the head of applied research and solutions at the insurance and consulting firm Aon Hewitt Middle East.

"I think there needs to be more happening on the political and policy side," she added.

Ms Punshi pointed to two other initiatives designed to promote small businesses: the Khalifa Fund for Enterprise Development in Abu Dhabi and Tamkeen in Bahrain.

Panos Manolopoulos, the managing partner for the Middle East at the recruitment company Stanton Chase, said there were better opportunities for employment in certain sectors.

"I believe that the big growth will come in retail and technology," said Mr Manolopoulos.

"We could expect that retail will continue to grow [in the Arab world] because there are a lot of gaps. There will certainly be openings in the technology sector, especially with the development of the telecoms and their domination in other markets," he added.

Gallup, founded in the US in 1935, specialises in public-opinion polls and advising companies and governments.

Its planned initiative in Cairo would be run as a non-governmental organisation (NGO) and so mark something of a departure from its mainstream business. But Mr Clifton said Gallup would also sell its advisory services on the back of the centre.

"Some of our services we would charge for," he said. "But the entity would be a non-profit."

Job creation is also a personal mission for Mr Clifton, whose book The Coming Jobs War was published recently. In it he argues political and business leaders pay too little attention to cultivating talented entrepreneurs.

Gallup has offices in Dubai and Doha, and runs the Gallup Centre for Muslim Studies from Abu Dhabi. The centre surveys public sentiment in Muslim communities in 40 nations worldwide.

Mr Clifton said the company had picked up on a rise in public suffering and what he termed "unemployment hopelessness" in the Arab world over the past few years. This was a root cause of the recent regional uprisings, he said.

"The Muslim Centre in Abu Dhabi showed a sudden rise in suffering [despite] GDP growing in Tunisia and Egypt by 5 or 6 per cent," he said.

"What we have found in these countries [is] you can't just watch the economics. You have got to watch the per cent of people that are suffering."