SCORE Egypt — ILO–FEI Pilot for SME Productivity and Working Conditions

Egypt's manufacturing SMEs have long struggled with low productivity and informal management practices, despite the Federation of Egyptian Industries (FEI) representing over 104,000 industrial enterprises and about 18% of the national economy. In 2018 the International Labour Organization (ILO) and FEI launched a pilot of ILO's SCORE Training methodology, combining classroom instruction with in-factory coaching on workplace cooperation, quality improvement and resource efficiency.

The pilot aimed to test whether SCORE's combination of classroom training and in-factory coaching could improve workplace cooperation, quality and resource efficiency in Egyptian SMEs, as a basis for wider scale-up.

The pilot enrolled roughly 30 SMEs in the engineering and chemical industries across Qalioubia and Menoufia governorates, combining classroom instruction with in-factory coaching.

Reported outcomes included a 90% enterprise satisfaction rate, with the majority of participating firms citing cost savings, fewer product defects and fewer worker complaints after training. The pilot's results helped attract further donor support: the Italian Agency for Development Cooperation (AICS) funded a EUR2.5 million, three-year 'Productivity Ecosystems for Decent Work' project extending the SCORE approach to Egypt's leather-tanning cluster in Robbiki and marble cluster in Shaq Al-Thu'ban, with a preliminary assessment of the furniture industry.

The evidence base here is a self-reported pilot survey of a modest sample (about 30 firms) rather than an independently audited productivity study; ILO's global SCORE results (up to 50% productivity gains across 15 countries) should not be assumed to transfer one-to-one to the smaller Egyptian pilot.