Rise Up Egypt, the country's first entrepreneurial summit, is coming

In two weeks, Cairo will host the “first-ever entrepreneurship summit in Egypt” a stone’s throw from Tahrir Square. Rise Up Egypt, which will be held on November 24th and 25th, aims to show that Egypt is at the “tipping-point of world-class innovation and entrepreneurship excellence.” Their premise, which I wholeheartedly agree with, is that entrepreneurs are changing Egypt for the better, and the next 100,000 high-value jobs will be created by startups.

From Egypt With Love

Rise Up Egypt promises to bring all of the players in Egypt’s entrepreneurship ecosystem in to one collaborative space. It is arguable whether this is the “first” such event, as we’ve had similar events before, notably from ArabNet. What is undoubted though is that this is the first home-grown summit, by Egyptian entrepreneurs for Egyptian entrepreneurs, and a uniquely Egyptian event. The fact that normally disparate competing organisations have agreed to work together proves that the collaborative vision is already working.

While many people have talked about putting on such an event, founder Abd El-Hameed Sharara has been the only one with the courage and conviction to put his money where his mouth is, literally. He quit is secure job and sold his car to realize this dream. Of course he’s been clever enough to get a local team of heavy-weights supporting him.

“Con O’Donnell, Moataz Kotb, and Mohammed Mansour have been super supportive. This event wouldn’t be happening without them,” he says, “and I’m also lucky enough to count on the talents of Fadi Ramzi, Ahmed Al-Alfi, Ahmed Naguib, Ashraf Sheta and Tarek Nasr amongst others.”

Thus far, the event is shaping up to be a real summit, much more than the talking-heads events we’ve become bored with.

The team aims to have 2,000 attendees over the two days, with parallel events including workshops, entertainment, talks, pitches, food, music, panels, a startup trade-fair, and roundtable discussions. All of the top investors, accelerators, trainers, NGOs, corporations and entrepreneurship heroes will be there. Innoventures, Yomken, Morph-D, ICE Cairo, and Juice Labs are putting on a series of collaborative events, so there’ll be a hackathon, makeathon, and ideathon. The winner of the StartUp Weekend Battle will announced there.

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Rise Up Egypt, the country’s first entrepreneurial summit, is coming