Working With Our Communities

Citadel Capital’s leadership team and employees firmly believe that the private sector has a responsibility to create a better future for youth in Egypt and the region. To that end, Citadel Capital’s formal funding for community development initiatives — as distinct from the personal philanthropy of the managing partners and staff — has totaled more than US$ 60 million since 2004. This commitment spans the Firm’s footprint as a regional private equity firm, from a focus on higher education in Egypt to vocational training for workers in the Algerian cement industry to helping rural communities gain access to basic education and vocational training in Sudan.

Creating businesses in these areas is an important step to empowering our communities, but education is a key challenge that the private sector must address if our region is to realize its full potential. In particular, a holistic approach to education that teaches the skills the marketplace needs will better empower youth in the region to participate in the workforce and allow them to help build more globally competitive national economies.

In 2008, the Firm took solid steps toward the rollout of a foundation that will focus on building and developing Egyptian schools targeting lower-middle income segments of the population. The foundation will work to deliver a quality Egyptian national curriculum education in both rural and urban settings.

In 2007, the Firm endowed the Citadel Capital Scholarship Foundation to grant academic scholarships to talented young Egyptian men and women interested in pursuing Master’s degrees and PhDs at international universities. Up to 20 students each year receive generous scholarships to follow their dreams at some of the most prestigious educational institutions worldwide. The only condition: They must return to work in Egypt upon graduation. Since 2007 CCSF has awarded scholarships to over 80 students. The ultimate aim of the Foundation is to provide Egypt with high caliber internationally competitive professionals across all disciplines.

Citadel Capital also donated US$ 250,000 to establish the Citadel Capital Financial Service Center (CCFSC) at the American University in Cairo (AUC). The center opened in 2006 as the Middle East’s first institution dedicated to providing financial and analytical education that prepares students for careers in securities trading, risk management and asset allocation. The CCFSC also strives to provide students, researchers and professionals with the knowledge and skills to lead the region’s emerging financial services industry.

Citadel Capital’s platform companies are also active participants in their communities. Sabina, Citadel Capital’s Portfolio Company for investment in Sudanese agricultural production, has put in place a fund of US$ 1.58 million for social infrastructure improvements near Kosti, in Sudan’s White Nile State, where the company has obtained a 99-year lease on a 254,000-feddans of land. The company will not only provide new employment opportunities for local residents, it will also become actively engaged in training and education. Sabina will allocate US$ 395,000 each year for four years to rehabilitate schools and establish vocational training programs for farmers. Three schools have been renovated and upgraded; a fourth is in progress. Once infrastructure development is complete, 33% of irrigation schemes and 15% of the land developed by Sabina will be returned to local farmers.

The Egyptian Refining Company (ERC), CCitadel Capital’s state-of-the-art US$ 3 billion greenfield second-stage oil refinery in the Greater Cairo Area has already established a community development office. The current role of the office is to communicate with local residents about the refinery, assess available skills and collect information regarding training and community education programs. The community development office’s scope of service will broaden gradually as the project moves into the implementation phase.

In 2009 Citadel Capital Portfolio Company ASEC Engineering launched an undergraduate internship program in cooperation with the Industrial Modernization Center (IMC) to help address the issue of unemployment in Egypt. The program provides opportunities for undergraduates to take part in a practical and theoretical training program. At the end of the program, participants are qualified to work in ASEC’s plants. Thus far the program has qualified 40 technicians who are now employed in the company.

The hard-scrabble existence that faces people in communities with inadequate educational and social infrastructure is one of the most shameful legacies of the imperialism, dictatorships, autocracies, and civil wars that have plagued our region for centuries.

We at Citadel Capital believe all people deserve the opportunity to learn, deserve clean water, deserve safe waste-water treatment plants, deserve the security of knowing where their next meal will come from. We also believe that together, we can bring these opportunities to our region, one community at a time.