Egypt: Tackling youth unemployment

About 400km south of Cairo, Sahar Mohamed Abou El-Hamd, 24, hovers over a small electric circular saw in her home in Kom el Dabaa, a village in Qena, Upper Egypt. "Not all girls can use such equipment," she shrieks. "No other girl can do the type of work, the hard labour, that I can do." For the last few months, Abou El-Hamd has been assembling engine filters for vehicles, primarily for the large Russian tractors that work the fields near her village, and the trucks that travel to Qena's factories to collect sugar for sale. As long as there's a demand for sugar, she says, there will be a demand for her goods.

Abou El-Hamd takes great pride in her business – not least because engine filters, circular saws and Russian tractors are not the usual preoccupations of women in Kom el Dabaa – and talks about opening a small factory in the next few years. But it's still early days, she says. And working from home saves on costs, allowing her to undercut other manufacturers and make a profit of more than 50% per filter sold.

With a degree in social work from the University of Aswan, Abou El-Hamd is one of the many young Egyptian graduates who have not been able to find jobs that match their education and expectations. In 2006, more than 80% of Egypt's unemployed were under the age of 30, and 82% of those unemployed had never worked before. Many of Egypt's unemployed youth are also among the country's best-educated; 95% have completed secondary school and many have university degrees. Instead of going straight from school to work, Abou El-Hamd graduated into the so-called "waiting generation".

A few years ago, someone like Abou El-Hamd would have been applying for government jobs and the unique benefits they offer – permanent contracts, social security and better work conditions compared with the private sector. But the former government's guarantee of public sector jobs to all graduates of university and technical secondary school was effectively suspended in the 1990s with a broader package of IMF-sponsored structural adjustment reforms to liberalise the Egyptian economy and increase the competitiveness of the labour market was introduced.