ESLSCA’s MBA Programme Is First in Region to Earn EFMD Accreditation

An MBA takes a few years. But creating an MBA programme that has the people who set the global benchmark saying, yes, this meets our standards, takes considerably longer. For ESLSCA University, which just saw its flagship business degree awarded EFMD Programme Accreditation, that process has been years in the making.

It started with a dream to take the university’s MBA programme, which first launched in 1998 around the idea of bringing international business education into conversation with the realities of working in Egypt, through EFMD Global’s accreditation process, a route that would put everything from its curriculum and teaching to its international exposure, corporate connections and quality assurance under a rather serious microscope. Over a decade, countless classrooms, faculty meetings, student projects, alumni conversations and rounds of refinement later, the ESLSCA MBA has come out the other side with the accreditation.

And it comes with a rather significant footnote: it is the first MBA programme in Egypt, the Middle East and Africa to receive it.

That distinction matters because EFMD Programme Accreditation is not a participation trophy. The process benchmarks business and management programmes against international standards across everything from how a programme is designed and taught to how students are assessed, how closely it connects to industry and how seriously an institution takes the less glamorous but very important business of improving itself.

“This achievement is the result of years of vision, persistence, and collective effort,” Dr. Ali El Meligui, Chairman of the Board of Trustees at ESLSCA University, tells CairoScene. “What began as an ambition to pursue international accreditation has evolved into a journey of continuous development involving the entire ESLSCA community.”

Of course, an accreditation like this does not belong to one dean, one faculty member or one graduating class. It is the accumulated work of the people who have taught the programme, run it, studied through it, graduated from it and, in many cases, gone on to carry the ESLSCA name into boardrooms and businesses of their own.

“Over years, every MBA graduate has become an ambassador,” Prof. Nadia Elaref, President at ESLSCA University, tells CairoScene. “From the first students who enrolled in 1998, to our recent graduates in September 2026.”

There is something particularly fitting about that. An MBA is ultimately supposed to leave the classroom. Its real test happens in meetings, businesses, new ventures, difficult decisions, career pivots and all the moments where knowing what a textbook says is considerably less useful than knowing what to do next. The EFMD accreditation recognises that practical side alongside the academic one.

And while the accreditation marks a major milestone for the programme, it also gives the university a new benchmark to work from, rather than a reason to stop moving.

“This is not a finish line,” says Dr. Helmi Hammami, Dean of the School of Business. “It is the first step on the longer road of quality we are building together.”

Which means, now that ESLSCA has finally got the recognition it spent years chasing, it has the slightly harder job of actually living up to it.