the Regional Enterprises Development Center (REDEC QENA) in the Upper Egyptian governorate of Qena, a poor and underdeveloped region of Egypt. REDEC works with the local community to provide financial and non-financial services to help support the growth of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and to provide programmatic support in the education and environmental sectors.

Egypt Enterprise Development Project (EEDP) is funded by the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). EEDP builds on CIDA’s Egypt Program goal: “to support Egypt in its efforts to reduce poverty of the country’s marginalized groups, in particular women and youth”. 

\EEDP also builds on CIDA’s involvement in M/SME sector development in Egypt and is closely aligned with CIDA’s Country Development Programming Framework objectives: “to foster better employment opportunities through support to small and medium enterprise development.” CIDA allocated CDN$ 4,750,000 to cover project implementation cost. In addition, the SFD allocated CDN$ 24 million credit fund. EEDP is a five year project that started in June 2008 and executed by Community Development and Small Enterprises Association (El Mobadara).

EEDP goalis to generate improved employment opportunities through support to M/ SMEs with emphasis on Egypt's marginalized groups, in particular women and youth.

The project purpose isto provide demand-driven non-financial services including facilitating access to finance to M/SMEs in six selected governorates (Qena,Sohag,Banisuef,Fayoum ,Gharbia,and Behira)  in an effective and sustainable manner.

In partnership with partner NGOs in targeted governorates and project stakeholders, EEDP is planning to build the capacity of six Regional Enterprise Development Centers (REDECs) to render gender-responsive, environmentally sensitive, and demand-driven business development services (BDS) to existing M/SMEs / start-ups (male & female). Moreover, the project will assist partner NGOs to establish a network to play an active role in advocacy and to effectively engage decision makers in M/SME issues at the local and national levels.