GEB is looking for building the capacity in a new environmentally friendly energy era exploited from the Egyptian territories. GEB will create the first wave of Egyptian students and entrepreneurs able to secure jobs, and open businesses, to harness the under-utilized geothermal resources available in Egypt.GEB has two main major milestones. The first is to build the capacity of the Egyptian HEIs partners (academic staff and laboratories) in the field of geothermal energy. The second is to develop the first graduate diploma of geothermal energy engineering in Egypt based on the European standards. The main objective of this diploma is supplying the local market with its demand of qualified engineers/graduates in the field of geothermal energy investigation, systems design, and project management with available technologies customized to the different applications of geothermal energy in the national circumstances. The project activities aim at raising the level of awareness of the community and decision makers to the geothermal energy potentials in Egypt.

In the MENA region the unemployment rate among HE graduates is among the highest in the world as a direct result of the mismatch between education outcomes and expectations of the labor market. With the fast evolving pattern of the market-needs as a result of revolutionary technologies such as Industry 4.0, AI, robotics and machine learning, a new shift in human resource requirements map is at hand leaving HEIs with an inevitable time-pressing challenge to adjust the learning processes to yield particular competencies that expand way beyond the technical knowledge that has been the focus for many decades. It is thus the aim of this project is to develop a generation of globally-exposed HE graduates, equipped with essential character, social and cognitive skills blended with academic competencies, with a higher degree of readiness for the fast-evolving community and job market, and who are capable to integrate effectively in multi-cultural, diverse eco-system. Hence, Competence-tailored Student Journey Map that blends academic and academic-complimentary competencies during the student lifetime is introduced. A pilot set of competence-tailored 35 short- and 10 long-term extracurricular activities & “quests” are designed and programmed into the LMS & SIS of partner HEIs, along with 35 courses (120 ECTS) in Engineering and ICT restructured to align with SDGs in competency-based format, targeting the full envisioned picture of the future “Global Citizen” possessing competencies that were clearly identified via an exhaustive gap analysis developed at the beginning of the project. A target of at least 60 students at each of the 7 partner HEIs in Egypt, Jordan and Algeria is planned. Student-Stakeholders Engagement Portal, where employers and students share their profiles and where both have open arena to engage in internships, summer jobs, capacity building programs is essential in the proposed integrative (academic/extracurricular/industry engagement) approach.