Damietta Labour Market Assessment for Apprenticeship Design

MAIS commissioned Common Ground Solutions to build the evidence base for the second phase of an enterprise-based apprenticeship programme in Damietta governorate, which will place 206 young people, a fifth of them refugees, with host enterprises.

The terms of reference set twelve research questions on the structure and direction of the local labour market, the occupations in demand and in decline, the skills employers cannot find, and the conditions an apprenticeship would have to meet in Damietta.

CGS designed a qualitative, purposive assessment approaching each question from four directions, so that no conclusion rested on a single kind of source: enterprises, institutions, young people, and the secondary record. Nine instruments were developed and administered in Arabic.

Fieldwork covered Damietta city, New Damietta, Ras El-Bar and the markazes and villages. The team completed 31 enterprise interviews across 15 economic activities, above the contracted range of 25 to 30, with seven institutional interviews spanning the labour directorate, sector and business associations, training providers and civil society organisations. Eight focus group discussions and four individual interviews reached 57 young people, 38 of them women and 31 per cent non-Egyptian, including participants with mobility disabilities.

All material was transcribed in full and coded against a purpose-built codebook of 140 codes in 15 families, producing 2,704 coded segments and a register of every figure as spoken with its source and unit.

CGS delivered the assessment report with eleven proposed training programmes, thirty recommendations grouped by decision owner, a confidential host-enterprise shortlist, and the supporting annexes.