Overview:

 During the last four decades, industry in Egypt was mostly state-owned and managed according to governmental regulations which unlikely gave insufficient support to capacity building in the field of technology transfer, licensing and managing intellectual property rights. Very limited number of industrial companies established R&D units; the main task of which is solving troubleshooting and minor production problems. Therefore, industrial development based on local capabilities was limited.

 CMRDI Projects:

 Establishing data base of research results and relevant industrial beneficiaries represents a great challenge for the project due to the huge number of research outputs and the diversity of beneficiaries. Although CMRDI was primarily established as an industrial research organization serving mainly the mineral and metal industries, but for the promotion of the institute’s staff it was obligatory to carry out basic and academic research and publish it in internationally reputed journals and periodicals. Consequently, strengthening of the developmental stage of research projects through process engineering and feasibility studies was not enhanced properly. In addition, the government encouraged privatization and most of the state-owned industries are being privatized, consequently the demand for research and development has been drastically reduced. Nevertheless, CMRDI still has a strong base for R&I interaction, and a compromise should be attained between applied and academic research. Strict criteria for selection of research results amenable for commercialization should be formulated in addition to the incentives which should be given to researchers to increase their industry outputs.