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

An ENCC reading of how education, skills, innovation, digital capability, the economy and enabling conditions shape Egypt’s productivity and resilience.

Release: 2026-02-19 | Issuer: UNDP and Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Knowledge Foundation | Coverage: 195 countries

Introduction

The Global Knowledge Index (GKI) 2025 placed Egypt 87th among 195 countries, with a score of 36.1. The index provides a system-level diagnostic of the conditions that allow knowledge to be produced, acquired, disseminated and converted into economic and social value.

For competitiveness policy, the headline result is only a starting point. The sector pattern is more useful because it reveals where education and skills, research and innovation, digital infrastructure, economic capability and institutional conditions reinforce—or constrain—one another.

Executive summary

Egypt recorded a score of 36.1 and ranked 87 of 195 countries.
Under the redesigned framework, TVET and higher education and research, development and innovation shared Egypt’s strongest sector rank (79th). Pre-university education had the weakest rank (117th), while research, development and innovation recorded the lowest score (16.8).
The composite result should be used as a diagnostic signal, not as proof that one intervention caused a movement in score or rank.
Egypt’s response should join education and skills reform to innovation, digitalisation, enterprise upgrading and stronger implementation institutions.
Every comparison must retain the edition, denominator and methodology label.
The 2025 score is not directly comparable with 2020–2024 because the framework and statistical treatment were substantially redesigned.

What the index measures

The GKI assesses the performance of national knowledge systems across the main stages and conditions of knowledge creation and use. Its sector structure links human capital, research and innovation, ICT, economic sophistication and enabling institutional conditions to productivity, diversification, investment attractiveness and resilience.

Egypt’s official results

Knowledge sector	Score	Rank
Pre-university education	51.6	117
TVET and higher education	44.2	79
Research, development and innovation	16.8	79
ICT	33.1	107
Economy	36.7	104
ESG	47.7	102

ENCC reading: Under the redesigned framework, TVET and higher education and research, development and innovation shared Egypt’s strongest sector rank (79th). Pre-university education had the weakest rank (117th), while research, development and innovation recorded the lowest score (16.8).

The verified control record does not report a world-average value for this edition; none has been inferred.

Implications for Egypt’s competitiveness

Productivity: the return on education and digital investment depends on whether firms and public institutions can absorb knowledge and improve processes.
Innovation: research capacity must connect to enterprise demand, commercialisation, finance and intellectual-property pathways.
Skills: learning outcomes, technical pathways and higher education need a common labour-market and technology-demand signal.
Investment: investors evaluate the availability of skills, digital capacity, research partners, supplier capabilities and regulatory predictability as one system.
Inclusion and resilience: broad access to quality learning and digital tools expands participation and improves the ability to adapt to shocks and technological change.

Priority action agenda

Priority	Lead and partners	Horizon	Illustrative KPI
Create a governed national knowledge-system dashboard aligned to GKI sectors and national priorities.	Cabinet-level coordination; CAPMAS; relevant ministries; private sector	6–12 months	Dashboard operational; annual indicator-vintage register published
Build an education-to-employment evidence loop for technical and higher education.	Education, higher education and labour authorities; employers	6–18 months	Graduate tracer coverage; employer-alignment measures; placement rate
Connect public research funding to mission-oriented programmes and enterprise adoption.	Research and innovation authorities; universities; industry; finance providers	12–24 months	Collaborative projects; private co-funding; patents/licences; firm adoption
Accelerate affordable, reliable digital access and productive digital use by firms and public services.	ICT authorities; regulators; service providers; MSME agencies	12–24 months	Quality and affordability measures; cloud and digital-tool adoption by firms
Strengthen the institutional conditions that turn knowledge assets into investment, exports and higher-value activity.	Economic, investment and regulatory authorities; business associations	Structural	Time-to-market; knowledge-intensive exports; innovative-firm participation

Monitoring framework

Track the composite score and rank together with coverage and edition year.
Monitor every knowledge sector and selected underlying indicators rather than the composite alone.
Preserve the source year and update date for each national indicator.
Publish region-, sex-, age- and firm-size disaggregation where national data permit.
Review implementation annually and reconcile it with the next official GKI release without overwriting historical values.

Data and methodology limits

This reading uses the official GKI 2025 edition and the verified Egypt profile values. The edition applies the GKI 2025 redesigned six-pillar methodology. Composite scores combine indicators with different source years and do not establish causality. Changes in coverage, sources and methods require explicit edition labels.

The 2025 edition introduced a structural and statistical overhaul, combined TVET with higher education, replaced the enabling environment with ESG and expanded coverage to 195 countries. Its score must not be compared directly with 2020–2024.