From September 29 through October 6, Cairo pulsed with the energy of Egypt Innovation Week. The flagship Techne Summit Cairo 2025 officially opened the week — over 25,000 attendees, 250+ speakers, and 150+ investors converged across 70+ countries.
The venue — parts of the historic Sultan Hussein Kamel Palace turned into the Creativa Innovation Hub — blended heritage and tech.
One of the first sessions was a fireside chat between H.E. Dr. Mohamed Farid Saleh, Chairman of the Financial Regulatory Authority (FRA), and Eng. Tarek A. El Kady, CEO of Techne. Their exchange centered on regulation, innovation, and enabling ecosystems.
In that talk, Dr. Farid underscored the FRA’s intention to launch a fintech-oriented track inside its regulatory sandbox, and emphasized the importance of exit strategies and IPOs for long-term investor confidence.
But the story of the summit lived most in the booths, the side conversations, the founders pacing the corridors. Nour Emam, founder of Daleela by MotherBeing (formerly MotherBeing), was on stage discussing women’s health tech, reproductive health taboos, and scaling from Cairo into the Arab region.
Ahmed El Alfi (Sawari Ventures) spoke bluntly about mentorship, funding, and how new investment firms must do more than write checks — they must stay close, invest in people.
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Meanwhile, Ahmed Elzaher from ITIDA highlighted how the historic palace site itself was being repurposed into a hub of creativity, and how startups must reconnect innovation to local identity.
In the healthtech track, founders demonstrated tools for tele-medicine and diagnostics, pushing for expansions into underserved regions outside Greater Cairo. In the food tech and agri tracks, young teams pitched vertical farming models, urban beehive IoT sensors, and plant-based protein alternatives.
At one exhibit, CardoO (an IoT startup from Cairo) showed a smart wearable device capable of environmental sensing, capturing the attention of regional angel investors.
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In corridors near co-working pop-ups inside Creativa, two founders, one from a logistics startup in Beni Suef and another from an edtech platform in Assiut — found each other and sketched joint plans for rural last-mile learning pods.
But not all moments were on stage. On Day 2, a panel moderated at the American University in Cairo’s New Cairo campus brought together founders who admitted they had missed payrolls, pivoted models multiple times, or worried publicly about runway. One founder whispered to a journalist: “Here I learn that failure can still be part of your brand.”
By the closing night, at an open rooftop in Garden City, investors and founders sipped karkadeh, debated exits, and swapped contact cards. Deals were discussed — undisclosed sums flowing — but more quietly, the real currency was empathy: people who had lived the highs and lows, promising to walk together onward.
When the lights dimmed on the summit, the city outside still roared. Techne 2025 was not only about what entrepreneurs built — but about reminding Cairo: those builders are people first, and their stories are the scaffolding of tomorrow.
