Research Information:FOCUS ON THE MIDDLE EAST


Al-Azhar University, in Cairo, Egypt, was founded in 975AD


Egypt launches ‘Knowledge Bank’


Two recent revolutions in Egypt are now followed by a ‘Knowledge Revolution’ involving national open access to scientific content from the world’s renowned publishers, writes Tarek Shawki


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n November 2015, President Abdel Fattah El-Sissi of Egypt welcomed the heads of the world’s major publishing houses to the presidential palace in Cairo to announce the launch of the so- called ‘Egyptian Knowledge Bank’ (EKB). This major event reflects the strong political will in Egypt to execute its vision towards building an ‘Egyptian Learning Society’ (ELS) which was announced a year earlier on 13 December 2014. The ELS initiative encompasses an ambitious plan to


24 Research Information FEBRUARY/MARCH 2016


reform education in Egypt and to establish the country as the first nation to translate the notions of knowledge and learning societies into realty.


The initiative seeks to solve chronic education challenges in Egypt in an innovative, non-classical fashion by tackling various issues in parallel and by finding out-of-the-box solutions to deep-rooted problems. It is worth noting that this initiative was proposed by the ‘Presidential Specialized Council for Education and


Scientific Research’ (PSCE), which was established by the President of Egypt back in September 2014 to be his strategic tool towards solving education problems. The PSCE started as a planning and strategic body, which soon emerged as an execution body in coordination with various government bodies in the country. This dual-system model was intended to accelerate development in the face of heavy bureaucracy but it was first received with doubts and significant resistance by legacy


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