Egypt is rarely short of big ideas. From Nasser’s steel mills to Sadat’s desert cities to Mubarak’s “second Nile valley,” presidents have promised transformation on a grand scale, only for many of the schemes to languish and ordinary Egyptians to be left wondering what difference they made to their lives.
A Daring Enterprise: A US-Egyptian Partnership and the Case for Soft Power tells a very different kind of story. It describes in detail how the US government brought a venture capital initiative into being, how it was developed, and how it has finally achieved a truly remarkable success.
Three authors are listed on the cover: James A. Harmon, Cornelius Queen, and Mark Warren. Yet the book is not a committee product; it is a first-person journey. From the opening pages it is clear that the narrative belongs to Harmon. The co-authors are present in the clarity of the prose and the structure of the narrative, but the experiences, doubts, and satisfactions are recognizably Harmon’s own.
“I received the call from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the wake of Egypt’s 2011 revolution,” he writes. Egypt was reeling after the overthrow of its president, Hosni Mubarak. Would Harmon consider leading an effort to stabilize the Egyptian economy?
Harmon was an investment banker who had previously served as chairman of the Export-Import Bank of the United States. Now Clinton wanted to avoid the political and economic collapse of Egypt. She believed the best way to achieve stability would be through American partnership and investment.
“And so,” writes Harmon, “under the auspices of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the bipartisan blessing of Congress, we created the Egyptian-American Enterprise Fund: a $300 million commitment from the American people to help build a resilient, inclusive Egyptian private sector that could deliver jobs, growth and stability.”
USAID, established by president John F. Kennedy in 1961, was the primary US federal government agency responsible for administering civilian foreign aid and international development.
The enterprise has been outstandingly successful. Today the fund’s assets are valued at roughly twice the original congressional appropriation, with investments in 148 companies supporting some 60,000 jobs. In addition, Egypt has attracted an estimated $1.7 billion in foreign investment.
Running through the book is a clear sense of what is at stake for both sides. For Egyptians, it is the hope that foreign involvement might bring steady jobs and a chance for small firms to grow. On the American side, it is the issue of what sort of presence to have in a country that is strategically important, politically awkward, and often openly suspicious of Washington. Harmon’s answer is pragmatic: invest fairly, share risks, and let the record of what has been achieved speak for itself.
The narrative does not pretend that an enterprise fund can remake a political system or wipe away decades of distrust. The argument is not that capital solves everything, but that it can do more than it often has been tried to do, if deployed patiently and with a degree of humility.
Set against this are the ghosts of past ambitions by Egypt’s presidents – vast and costly ventures largely driven by ego and symbolism. Unlike them, the enterprise fund Harmon describes works from the bottom up, one firm and one partnership at a time.
Inside the investment story
The heart of the book lies in those partnerships. Harmon takes the reader through the life of an investment: how potential companies were identified, how their books were examined, how management was judged, and how negotiations unfolded. There is nothing dry about these passages.
At every stage, personalities intrude – the founder who cannot quite let go, the local banker who mistrusts foreign equity, the American lawyer who insists on protections that look alien in an Egyptian context. The appeal of the narrative is that none of this is airbrushed. Success, when it comes, feels earned.
The theme of “soft power” runs through the book. Harmon sees the enterprise as “a model of what America can be at its best: pragmatic, generous, principled.”
What will strike many readers is how contemporary the book feels. In an age when “foreign intervention” is often a term of abuse, and when large segments of American opinion question the value of engagement abroad at all, “A Daring Enterprise” is an account of how one carefully designed tool of policy actually worked, and what was learned in the process.
Very early on in his narrative, Harmon reflects that “this idea – that American capital, guided by American values, can create peace through prosperity – is not out of date. It is more vital than ever.” In what follows, the reader is given ample reason to see this as more than a slogan. Harmon’s account shows how that idea played out in offices, workshops, and homes across Egypt.
For anyone who wants to understand what a constructive American role in the Middle East might look like beyond the language of bases and bombs, this book offers an engaging, human, and ultimately hopeful way forward.
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A DARING ENTERPRISE: A US-EGYPTIAN PARTNERSHIP AND THE CASE FOR SOFT POWER
By James A. Harmon, Cornelius Queen and Mark Warren
240 pages; $32
