TICO — Egypt's National Network of Technology Innovation & Commercialisation Offices

In 2013, Egypt's Academy of Scientific Research and Technology (ASRT), together with the Egyptian Patent Office, launched the Technology Innovation and Commercialisation Office (TICO) initiative to place a standard three-part unit — a technology transfer office focused on industry links, a technology innovation support centre for IP assistance, and a grants/international-collaboration office — inside universities and research centres across the country.
The OECD's 2026 Innovation Policy Review of Egypt confirms the network had grown to 56 TICOs by 2024, and notes the offices are now being restructured into 'offices of technology commercialisation' (OCT) that would engage industry partners earlier in the research process rather than only at the patenting/licensing stage.
The same OECD review is candid about limited results so far: it finds that Egypt's rapidly rising volume of scientific publications 'has not translated into higher patenting activity,' pointing to persistently weak knowledge-sharing between academia and industry despite the TICO network's decade of operation. The initiative is therefore a real, nationally scaled structure with credible independent oversight, but one whose own evaluators say has not yet closed the science-to-industry gap it was built to bridge.

Read the full analysis: https://www.scidev.net/global/news/technology-transfer-centres-to-be-set-up-in-egypt/