Cairo - The International Organization for Migration (IOM) in Egypt, in collaboration with the Big Data for Migration Alliance (BD4M), are organising a two-day capacity building workshop and one-day technical studio in Cairo on exploring the potential use of innovative data, methods, and tools to inform labour migration policy in Egypt and to complement traditional data sources.

The workshops taking place on February 21st -22nd and the studio on February 23rd will see the participation of representatives from Egyptian authorities and are being held in close coordination with the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS).

“With the rapid advancement of new data sources, tools and methods, there is an unprecedented opportunity to address some of the critical knowledge gaps in the field of labour migration research,” said Mr. Carlos Oliver-Cruz, IOM Egypt’s Chief of Mission.

"Innovative approaches to data collection and analysis hold great potential for helping governments and private sector fill knowledge gaps to better match the skills of migrant workers with the needs of employers’ and conduct foreign and domestic labour market analysis in Egypt and beyond,” stated Marina Manke, Chief of the IOM Global Migration Data Analysis Centre (GMDAC). 

“The purpose of the BD4M is to bring stakeholders together such as in this event to raise these timely topics and turn recommendations into concrete practices,” she added.

The topic of labour migration still poses significant research gaps globally. But with the rapid advancement of technologies and the emergence of new data sources, tools, and methods, there is an unprecedented opportunity to address some of these critical knowledge gaps in this topic.

Merely possessing and identifying new technologies and data sources is insufficient to find answers to the pressing questions and to inevitably inform labour market policy. It is imperative that the relevant stakeholders, which inform and shape labour migration policies, are equipped with the necessary skills to handle this data.

The workshop will be addressing this issue directly by providing Egyptian authorities with the necessary skills to utilize the appropriate methods and to respond to policy inquiries in a responsible and ethical manner. 

Following the workshop, the technical studio aims to connect problem owners, data holders, and data scientists to prototype solutions for better use of existing data. Participants will aim to thoroughly explore the possibilities and prospects of business-to-government data sharing mechanisms.

Both events are taking place within the broader framework of the “Towards a Holistic Approach to Labor Migration Governance and Labor Mobility in North Africa” (THAMM) programme generously funded by the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and the EU Emergency Trust Fund for Africa (EUTF), which aims to facilitate the mobility of people for employment purposes between North African Countries such as Egypt and key destination countries in Europe and beyond.

Under Specific Objective 3 of the THAMM project, the workshops are precisely addressing this by aiming to enhance the capacity of relevant stakeholders to identify and respond to gaps in the national labour market using demographic and labour market data.

Established in 2018, the BDM is a joint initiative of IOM’s Global Migration Data Analysis Centre (GMDAC), the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission (JRC), and the Governance Lab at New York University (The GovLab). 

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For more information, please contact: 

Salma Okasha, IOM Egypt, Tel: +201012428527, Email: sokasha@iom.int 

Jorge Galindo, IOM GMDAC, Tel: +4915226216775, Email: jgalindo@iom.int