Global Talent Competitiveness Index 2025: Egypt’s Talent System through a Competitiveness Lens

A governed ENCC reading of Egypt’s capacity to enable, attract, grow and retain talent—and translate skills into productive outcomes.

Release: 2025-11-26 | Issuer: INSEAD and Portulans Institute | Coverage: 135 economies

Introduction

The Global Talent Competitiveness Index (GTCI) 2025 placed Egypt 94th among 135 economies, with a score of 36.62. The result provides a structured view of the institutions, markets, education and skills outcomes that shape an economy’s ability to compete for talent.

For Egypt, the value of the index lies less in the headline rank than in the distribution of performance across its six pillars. That distribution helps distinguish between the ability to create enabling conditions, attract people and investment, develop skills, retain talent and convert capabilities into productive outcomes.

Executive summary

Egypt recorded a score of 36.62 and ranked 94 of 135 economies.
Vocational and Technical Skills remained the highest-scoring pillar. Attract fell to 124th, and Generalist Adaptive Skills recorded the lowest score under the revised framework.
The result should be treated as a diagnostic signal, not as proof that one policy caused a movement in score or rank.
A credible response requires coordinated action across education, labour-market institutions, enterprise training, innovation policy and the investment environment.
Cross-edition comparisons must retain explicit edition labels because coverage, indicators and methodologies can change.

What the index measures

The GTCI assesses how economies enable, attract, grow and retain talent, together with the vocational, technical and higher-order skills outcomes produced by their talent systems. This connects human capital policy directly to productivity, innovation, employability, investment attractiveness and resilience.

Egypt’s official results

Pillar	Score	Rank
Enable	40.56	99
Attract	35.05	124
Grow	34.06	77
Retain	40.45	103
Vocational and Technical Skills	49.96	69
Generalist Adaptive Skills	19.65	88

Reading: Vocational and Technical Skills remained the highest-scoring pillar. Attract fell to 124th, and Generalist Adaptive Skills recorded the lowest score under the revised framework.

What the results mean for Egypt’s competitiveness

Productivity: weak matching between education, training and employer demand limits the return on human-capital investment.
Investment: firms assess the availability, mobility and retention of skills when choosing locations and scaling operations.
Innovation: technical capability must be paired with adaptive, analytical and collaborative skills to support technology adoption and higher-value activity.
Inclusion: widening access to quality learning and career opportunities expands the effective talent pool.
Resilience: lifelong learning and portable skills help workers and firms respond to technological and sectoral change.

Priority action agenda

Priority	Lead and partners	Horizon	Illustrative KPI
Establish a governed national talent-competitiveness dashboard linked to GTCI pillars and national data.	Cabinet-level coordination; CAPMAS; relevant ministries; private sector	6–12 months	Dashboard operational; annual indicator-vintage register published
Build sector skills compacts in high-employment and high-productivity activities.	Labour, education and industry authorities; business associations; employers	6–18 months	Employers covered; vacancy-to-training alignment; placement rate
Scale employer-based and lifelong learning with quality assurance.	Training bodies; firms; universities and technical institutions	12–24 months	Participation, completion and post-training employment/productivity measures
Improve attraction and retention conditions for high-skilled Egyptians and international talent.	Investment, labour, higher education and migration authorities; employers	12–24 months	Skilled vacancies filled; retention rate; returning-talent programmes
Embed adaptive, digital and innovation skills across curricula and workforce programmes.	Education and higher-education authorities; ICT sector; employers	Structural	Learners assessed against defined adaptive/digital competencies

Monitoring framework

Track score and rank together with the denominator and edition year.
Monitor all six pillars and selected sub-pillars rather than the composite alone.
Maintain separate baselines for formal education, lifelong learning, employability, attraction and retention.
Publish sex-, age-, region- and sector-disaggregated indicators where national data allow.
Review policy progress annually without presenting later database revisions as original-edition values.

Data and methodology limits

This reading uses the official GTCI 2025 country profile for Egypt on report page 142. Comparisons across editions are indicative only: country coverage, indicator composition, source years and methods can change. The 2025 framework introduced methodological refinements and renamed the sixth pillar Generalist Adaptive Skills. Composite results are diagnostic and do not establish causality.