James A Harmon et al., "A Daring Enterprise: The US, Post-Revolutionary Egypt, and a Partnership That Defied the Odds" (American U in Cairo Press, 2026)

By the way, what is exactly an enterprise fund for someone who is not initiated into this topic? And when there is instability in the Middle East or even in other countries, usually the traditional idea is foreign aid in different forms.

especially in the Middle East, let's say.

But why do you think the idea of enterprise fund was a more appropriate response to the Arab Spring instead of the traditional foreign aid that the United States more or less relies on?

Yeah, that's a good question.

And I know not a lot of people know what an enterprise fund they're gaining popularity now, especially with the current administration here in the United States.

But what they are essentially are their enterprise funds are private investment vehicles that are authorized by the U.S. Congress to support private sector development in countries that are important.

So in our case, we're essentially a 501c3, which is a nonprofit under US law.

And we're led by an independent board of directors, six Americans, three Egyptians by congressional statute.

all of whom are private citizens, investment professionals specifically, who have worked in emerging markets and international banking and finance, and who are essentially appointed by the White House to lead these enterprise funds and to leverage their investment expertise to help stimulate private sector development in other countries.

So Just to sum it up, enterprise funds are private sector-led investment vehicles that are led by private investment professionals from both countries that use U.S. government funding to help stimulate private sector development in countries around the world.

And in Egypt, an enterprise fund made sense because it offered an opportunity to help grow the private sector in a country with a mixed economy.

So Egypt has some semblance of a private sector, but there's also a heavy military and state presence in the economy.

So the thinking was moving beyond bilateral foreign assistance where one government gives another government grants to distribute through local NGOs and address certain development priorities.

What we did and what the thinking was, was that if we could grow the private sector in Egypt and invest directly in private enterprises, businesses that were undercapitalized and needed access to financing, then we could help create jobs, attract foreign investment, and ultimately grow and stabilize the economy of a key regional ally.

And so that's the thinking behind it.

And the enterprise fund concept goes back to the early 1990s.

It was originally the brainchild of the first Bush administration who created 10 enterprise funds for 19 countries across Eastern and Central Europe to help support the transition of democracy by supporting private sector development and the growth of market-led economies to help gird the transition of democracy in those countries that we're coming out of.

The former Soviet Union.

And so policymakers in 2011 believed that the Arab Spring was a moment in history that was analogous to the fall of the Berlin Wall.

And that's why the model was reintroduced under the Obama administration.

So we like to say that we're bipartisan, which is rare these days in our political environment.