Egypt's billionaire El Sewedy family deepens education push with eight new German-model tech schools

Elsewedy Electric, the energy manufacturing group controlled by Egypt's El Sewedy industrial family, is partnering with the Ministry of Education and Technical Education to launch eight Egyptian-German technical schools, extending a vocational education footprint the family has built over more than a decade.

The schools follow the Egyptian-German Technical Schools model, which trains students to internationally accredited standards drawn from Germany's dual education system, combining classroom instruction with hands-on work in industry. The programme sits within a wider government drive to modernise technical education and align graduates with the needs of local and international labour markets.

The partnership adds to one of the most developed private-sector roles in Egyptian vocational training. Elsewedy Electric has run its own technical academy since 2011, and the family has treated skills development as an extension of the industrial business that made its fortune.

A family business dating to 1938

Elsewedy Electric traces its roots to 1938, when the El Sewedy family began trading in electrical goods in Cairo. The company grew into a multinational manufacturer of cables, transformers, electrical products, telecommunications equipment and wind energy systems, and expanded into engineering, procurement and construction.

It listed on the Egyptian Exchange under the ticker SWDY and reported revenue of about $4.8 billion in 2023. The group employs a workforce numbering in the tens of thousands and operates across the Middle East, Africa, Europe and Asia, with projects spanning power transmission in Egypt, transformers in Kuwait and Libya, meters in Mozambique and utility work in Zambia.

Ahmed El Sewedy has led the company as president and chief executive since 1986. He holds a degree in electrical engineering from Cairo University and chairs or sits on numerous bilateral business councils linking Egypt to China, Ethiopia, Zambia, South Africa, Kenya, the United Arab Emirates and others. The family retains control of the group, which remains among the largest industrial concerns in Egypt.

A decade of technical schooling

The new schools build on the Elsewedy Technical Academy, which the company established with the Ministry of Education in 2011 to prepare technicians for the industrial workforce. The academy runs three-year secondary programmes weighted heavily toward practical training, at roughly 80 percent hands-on work against 20 percent theory, following international standards with a strong German influence.

It operates through the El Sewedy Electric Foundation, the group's non-profit arm, established in 2018 to support health, education and social work. The academy has grown to seven schools across seven governorates, including sites in 10th of Ramadan City, Sadat City and Port Said, and has graduated more than 5,000 students while enrolling over 3,000. It became the first vocational school in the region to secure the ISO 21001 education management certification from Germany's TÜV Nord, and works with more than 50 industry partners across manufacturing, energy and green technology.

The academy has also positioned itself as a model for public-private cooperation in a sector Egypt has struggled to make attractive. It runs dedicated classes for students with hearing disabilities and has pushed to raise female participation in technical fields that have traditionally drawn few women.

Skills as national strategy

The expansion aligns with a government target to widen the country's network of applied technology schools and lift the quality and reputation of technical education. Egypt has pursued partnerships with Germany, Japan, Switzerland and others to import vocational training methods, and has set goals to equip a growing share of students with foreign-language skills and modern technical competencies.

Germany has become a recurring partner in that effort, through its development agency and through industrial firms operating in Egypt. The dual model, in which employers help design curricula and provide workplace training, is meant to close the gap between what schools teach and what industry needs, a persistent weakness in Egypt's labour market.

The El Sewedy family's continued investment gives it an unusual dual position, as both a large employer of technical graduates and a builder of the schools that produce them. That alignment of commercial and educational interest has underpinned the academy's growth, and the eight new schools extend it further into the national system.