Episode 5: Samira Negm: Revolutionizing Travel for Women in Egypt
Ever felt frustrated with what feels like spending a huge chunk of your life commuting to work?
Well, so was Samira Negm, formerly a software engineer in Cairo, Egypt, now a founder of Raye7, a culturally sensitive ride-sharing mobile app that helps reduce the enormous amount of time Egyptians are stuck in traffic and above all, provides safe car sharing for women.
To provide a bit of context as to just how big of a problem Samira’s ride sharing app is solving, here are just a few statistics. When it comes to traffic, Cairo is one of the most congested cities in the entire world -- so much so, that it costs the city close to 20 billion euros a year or 3 percent of its total GDP because of wasted time and also wasted gas. You can also imagine the massive environmental consequences of this, as well.
Then, there is huge issue of sexual harassment that very often takes place on public transportation for women in Cairo. Close to 85% of Egyptian women reported to have experienced sexual harassment on public transportation sometime in their life, with only 2-8 percent having reported the incident.
So, in this episode, you’ll hear from Samira about what it means to have devoted her life’s work to finding game-changing solutions to these massive problems, the challenges and triumphs she experienced starting out as a female CEO in Cairo, how women get left behind in the gap between Uber and public transport, and what makes Egypt a very exciting place for women in STEM - maybe even more so than many other countries around the world.
