NGOs and the dynamics of the Egyptian labour market

This article discusses the role NGOs play, not in their traditional role as service providers, but as employers in the Egyptian labour market. Over the last two decades, NGOs have been offering attractive job opportunities to middle-class professionals who are disillusioned with the private sector and no longer interested in joining the state bureaucracy. The working conditions of the growing number of NGO employees and how NGOs fare as employers has not been investigated in the substantial academic and policy literature on NGOs, which so far has been almost exclusively concerned with NGOs’ relationships with their ‘beneficiaries’ rather with than with their position as active players in a changing labour market.