“Egypt’s ability to create a new generation of young leaders is dependent upon how well we can educate our youth,” says Ahmed Heikal, founder of Qalaa Holdings, one of Egypt’s largest investment holding companies. “We believe education is a key component of our ongoing reform process as a country.”

Heikal was speaking at a ceremony for the company’s university scholarship programme staged earlier this year. Launched in 2007, the scholarship awards Egyptian students with full funding to pursue Masters level studies at top institutions in the US and Europe. There’s just one condition: the students must return to Egypt to work in their chosen field for a minimum of two years after completion of their degree.

The programme has to date awarded scholarships to 138 students, 17 of whom began their Masters degree programme last month (October). It is open to students undertaking a full-time degree in any field; previous recipients have studied disciplines such as film-making, anthropology, business, medicine and political and economic development. Students must also have at least two years of work experience after graduation and “genuine financial need”.

One of these recipients is Randa Fahmy, who completed a Masters in engineering at Cambridge University in 2013. She applied for the scholarship after launching her own solar energy company, KarmSolar. “My main target was to better learn how to sustainably manage the three resources of agriculture, groundwater and energy, and how policies can govern the interactions between the sectors,” she says. However she admits that implementing in Egypt what she learned at Cambridge had been a challenge — partly because of the “technological advancement” of the UK and partly because of “bureaucracy” in Egypt.