Around the Middle East
The 700 million people across the Middle East, North Africa, and Pakistan are experiencing a massive transformation, occurring at a rapid pace. The region has made impressive progress over the past several decades, but there is still much to do. Creating job opportunities will make the biggest difference for people’s lives in this region.
Youth in the region have big dreams and are as talented as youth everywhere in the world – they just have less opportunities. Consider that one out of ten people, globally, lives here—20 years from now, that ratio will be one out of six. With 16% of the world’s youth in this region, their success matters not only for the region’s prosperity but also for the world’s.
This is why creating opportunities for the youth is our purpose in the Middle East, Egypt and Pakistan. It’s also a central part of our firm’s global purpose—to help create positive, enduring change in the world. We do this in several ways.
Mohammad from our Dubai office shares more about how we are empowering future leaders and NGOs to enable sustainable and inclusive growth in the Middle East, Egypt, and Pakistan.
Developing future leaders
edad: Introducing university students to the world of Consulting
We offer edad as a 2-day program for senior students to get exposure to on-the-job consulting experience. Participants have access to critical skill-building that prepares them for the workforce—including interview preparation, effective communications, and problem-solving essentials. More than 1,000 participants have completed the program so far.
Little did i know that the edad program would have such a profound impact on shaping my future.
edad in the news
MALP—McKinsey Accelerated Leadership Program in Qatar
This year-long program offers training for Qatari women and men aged 24 to 36 who are playing a role in shaping the future of Qatari society, economy, and culture. MALP was designed for cohorts of ten to 15 participants who are selected after a thorough referral and interview process. The program starts with a one-week self-discovery program and continues with individual coaching and intracohort support. A unique feature of the program is that it engages previous fellows as mentors to pass on skills to help the next wave of leaders.
If you hear something great about me in the future, I want you to know it is because of this program.
GCC Board Directors Institute (BDI): Helping the next generation of directors
As a founding content partner, our work with GCC BDI is focused on helping improve corporate governance of boards in the GCC to ensure stronger financial performance, increased accountability, and overall long-term sustainability and success of their organizations.
GCC BDI in the news
Creating a capable workforce
INJAZ Al-Arab
We teamed up with INJAZ Al-Arab, the regional operating center of Junior Achievement Worldwide, to reach 5 million youth in next five years by digitizing their operations and models. With the local chapters of INJAZ in Egypt, Kuwait, and UAE, our colleagues facilitate workshops for students on entrepreneurship, investing, personal finance, career guidance, and financial literacy to help bridge the skills gap between traditional education and employment opportunities.
CIRCLE Women
We worked with CIRCLE to set up a best-in-class tech school for women in Pakistan by partnering with leading tech schools globally for curriculum creation and global donor-organization fundraising.
Pakistan Society for Human Resource Management
Our partners delivered a masterclass on the latest talent trends for HR professionals across the country
Aiding the ongoing refugee crisis
There are over 500,000 children among the refugee population in Lebanon, making education one of the most challenging aspects of the crisis. Working in close collaboration with Alsama Project and Tamkeen Educational Centers, we developed a program to improve the classroom experience and education outcomes in refugee camps, from curriculum development, to teacher training, and broader school governance. Our colleagues also volunteered their time to mentor students from different schools, encouraging them to plan for the future and set education goals, despite the challenges they face.
A short documentary about our education work with Alsama Project and Tamkeen Educational Centers to help children from the refugee community in Lebanon.
There is still much to do, but with McKinsey’s help, we were placed on the right track. We are more organized, more systematic, more efficient, and most importantly, we focus on impact.
CodeBrave
We work with the nonprofit CodeBrave to help underprivileged youth in Lebanon build coding and robotics skills.
Our social impact in Egypt
Supporting with strategy
We collaborated with the Magdi Yacoub Global Heart Foundation, which provides free advanced cardiac care to children across the Middle East. We helped the Foundation consider how to significantly scale up its operation to meet treatment needs, launch a new hospital in Cairo, and sustain its Heart Hospital in Aswan.
Leadership and career guidance workshops
More than 40 McKinsey volunteers from the Cairo office partnered with the Gozour Foundation to run workshops for entrepreneurs and young men and women—they worked with 25 women to develop essential soft and leadership skills and hosted 1-on-1 coaching and career guidance workshops for 60 young men and women whereby they set career goals and roadmaps to achieve them.
Helping Egypt’s most vulnerable
A group of volunteers helped assemble more than 600 food packages to distribute to families across Egypt.
Activity day at an orphanage
More than 35 volunteers partnered with the Dar Al Orman to hold a fun-filled day of entertainment for more than 50 children. The activities included painting and puzzles, as well as cognitive development games.
More initiatives in the Middle East
Lebanon
On the ground in Lebanon
In response to the explosion at the Port of Beirut in 2020, we provided emergency relief efforts in Beirut through financial contributions to the Lebanese Red Cross and on-the-ground support. These efforts included preparing home-cooked meals and food packages to be distributed to thousands of families.
LIFE Lebanon
Together with LIFE Lebanon, we co-created a program to empower small and medium-size businesses through pro bono consulting services, and mentorship.
Palestine
Taawon
We helped Taawon, the largest nonprofit organization that serves citizens across culture, healthcare, and education to redesign Bridge, one of its education programs, which prepares gifted high school students for college.
ICEP
We participated in the International Conference on Entrepreneurship for Palestine, where participants from 25 countries met 22 startups. Our colleagues coached the startups, led training sessions and facilitated panel discussions with VCs and government stakeholders during the event.
Kuwait
LOYAC
In Kuwait, we developed a crisis management process to help LOYAC navigate unforeseen circumstances, like the pandemic, so they can continue to empower young people with their leadership development programs.
Volunteers from the office also helped 30 children pick out an outfit at a department store for Eid in time for the holiday celebrations.
Yemen
Mokha Institute
We collaborated with the Mokha Institute, which focuses on revitalizing the coffee sector in the country. We helped to refine their strategy, operating model, and academy design for coffee farmers across Yemen.
We also supported the institute with the launch of the National Yemen Coffee Auction for small producers to showcase and auction their harvests to buyers, which was an incredibly successful event, that will now be repeated every year.