Feature in the University of Strathclyde News: Empowering female entrepreneurs in low-income communities of Greater Cairo

August 15, 2021

Feature in the University of Strathclyde News: Empowering female entrepreneurs in low-income communities of Greater Cairo

A study on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on female entrepreneurs in low-income urban communities of the Greater Cairo Region in Egypt, has revealed the challenges they face and how they can be overcome.

Restrictions on the free movement of women and the downscaling of work to contain the spread of the virus have had a tough impact on informal enterprises there, especially those owned by women.

The ‘COVID-19 transitions and transformations of economically marginalised women entrepreneurs within urban communities of the Greater Cairo Region in Egypt’ project interviewed 15 women who run small enterprises in the Asmarat area. Female entrepreneurship there has been hindered by the pandemic, with difficulties obtaining resources and supply chain efficiency among the challenges.

Professor Katerina Nicolopoulou, who specialises in Entrepreneurship and Social Innovation at the Hunter Centre for Entrepreneurship at the University of Strathclyde, and Professor Ashraf Salama from the Department of Architecture at the University of Strathclyde, along with Christine Samy from the Hunter Centre for Entrepreneurship carried out the research.

Professor Sahar Attia and her team from Cairo University and Dr Nancy Abdel Moneim from the Arab Academy for Science, Technology and Maritime also helped capture the challenges faced by the women, and what support they need.

The project, which ended in April, revealed the importance of understanding the role of resilience, as the women faced both persistent and substantial adversity over a specific COVID-19 period, from June to September 2020, and how entrepreneurial action became important to their ability to deal with adversity.

See full coverage of the GCRF project funded by the Scottish Funding Council here >>>

Michael Crosbie interviews Ashraf Salama on possible outcomes in a post-coronavirus world.

How Might the COVID-19 Change Architecture and Urban Design? Ashraf M. Salama, a professor at the Department of Architecture, University of Strathclyde, in Glasgow, Scotland, and the director of the Cluster for Research in Architecture and Urbanism of Cities in the Global South, has been following how these disciplines might be changing. He’s recently written a publicly peer-reviewed paper on some of his findings: “Coronavirus Questions That Will Not Go Away: Interrogating Urban and Socio-Spatial Implications of COVID-19 Measures.” I sat down with Salama to discuss some of the issues he raises, and what their implications might be for the built environment in the future (7 May 2020) (Feature image taken from CommonEdge by Andy Yueng, as part of his “Urban Density” drone series).