Dec 16, 2025
by Annika Schneider (Lead International Network, Purpose Foundation)
One part of my job is to write case studies: clear examples, focusing on governance mechanics: the kind of stories that end with a neat takeaway.
This one doesn’t. It is a different story, one that raises more questions than it answers, one that sparks inspirations and helps us sense our next steps toward a very concrete goal: working together with the Egyptian ecosystem to explore how steward-ownership can look like in this ancient country of pyramids, of pharaohs, of pollution and poverty and so much more.
But let’s start at the beginning.
Stephan, founder of Stapelstein and I, Annika, touched down at Cairo International Airport in early December for a week-long trip. The team at the Entrepreneurship Center of Heliopolis University had invited us, not only to “present” steward-ownership, but to co-develop a curriculum and to understand steward-ownership in the Egyptian context and culture with the goal of launching the Steward-Ownership Hub Egypt at the university in 2026.
We were thrilled about this opportunity because from our work to help make steward-ownership known and accessible globally we know that steward-ownership and its modern practices can’t and shouldn’t simply be copy-pasted from one region to the next. Translation work, not just of language, but of meaning, is crucial to explore which forms and aspects of steward-ownership are inherent to or coherent with a given culture, how society and the modern economy shapes steward-owned practices, and how a steward-owned governance form can be set up in a country.
Working with the Heliopolis team would have been enough learning for one week.
But it got even richer as we were invited to stay at SEKEM, an oasis at the desert’s edge, and an example of steward-ownership you can actually walk through.
SEKEM is a group of organizations with some entities being non-profit(s), i.e. education, and healthcare, while others are for-profit businesses, growing and selling tea, textiles, spices, and more. They all orbit around the shared vision of sustainable development and giving back to the community.
Spending a week in Egypt means Stephan and I are far from being experts on all things Egypt. But what we are experts on is steward-ownership, so this is a take on the Egyptian ecosystem through the lens of steward-ownership. During our trip we collected three major learnings that help us shape the next steps in understanding and supporting the development of the Egyptian steward-ownership ecosystem.
In our work, we see on a daily basis that education is a massive lever for raising awareness on steward-ownership. But while running the workshops with the Egyptian students, we were reminded once more: if we want steward-ownership to take root, we can’t only explain it to students and entrepreneurs, we have to make them feel it. In Egypt, companies are everywhere: family shops and street vendors, small manufacturers, and giant corporations selling luxury housing on glossy billboards, often towering above garbage dumps, smog, and neighborhoods where basic care is out of reach. And yet, when you ask students for concrete examples of companies they admire or understand, many draw a blank. The economy is omnipresent, but “ownership” remains strangely invisible. So how do you make steward-ownership, which is a complex legal and governance concept, something you can feel, touch, and imagine yourself inside? We worked with a very interactive approach and experienced how the students unleashed a great deal of energy and creativity during our simulation exercise, transforming into entrepreneurs with convincing and very holistically conceived concepts that directly and fluidly wove the principles of steward-ownership into their model.
SEKEM is steward-ownership you can visit, smell (for real, the tea and spice production had us take deep camomile-filled breaths) and touch. Sekem has a fully steward-owned governance through a holding that enables the businesses to operate with a non-profit at the core, and a protective mechanism (a golden share) to safeguard the purpose. But what was even more observable was a different challenge: the question of how to fill steward-ownership with life.
A steward-ownership structure alone does not bring a business’ potential to life. The real work is in the daily practice: building and sustaining a business model that treats people holistically, not like burritos moving through a production line (wondering why we are writing about burritos in a country of falafel and hummus? Read our take on the American dialysis industry and how people are treated like burritos here). And in conversations with the people shaping SEKEM, one thing became crystal clear: this is not a finished design. It’s a continuous process of understanding practices and governance, educating future leaders, and laying responsibility into the hands of a strong, evolving group of stewards. That in itself was not a new learning but a confirmation of a trend we see in our work entrepreneurs and businesses worldwide. Nonetheless, experiencing it on the ground was invaluable. And for us a great opportunity to learn from the forerunners, study best practices and make this knowledge available to others so they can shape their own solutions based on existing experiences.
Egypt isn’t just a country with ancient monuments, there is a lot to be learned from ancient institutions and customs. And one of them might be an unexpected bridge to steward-ownership. In Islamic tradition there is the waqf (وقف), a legal form dating back to the 9th century. A waqf is an endowment: someone donates an asset (often land), and a trustee/manager (called mutawali or nazhir) is responsible for managing it so it can generate income. That income is then used for a defined purpose, in the case of public waqfs often social and economic development. If that sounds familiar, it’s because the logic resembles steward-ownership in two important ways: 1. self-determination through keeping the power in the hands of the stewards, and 2. safeguarding the purpose through an asset lock. Historically seen, there was a second class of waqfs besides the one just described: family waqfs. They were widespread for long periods, and they often served one main purpose: preserving a family’s wealth. In the past, they were protecting elite landholdings from fragmentation and, in practice, reinforcing inequality. So the waqf carries both stories at once, similar to a foundation or trust in many countries: they can serve as a powerful tool for long-term purpose, or a tool that could be captured for private wealth preservation.
And today? Could the waqf be a way to explore how steward-ownership as a concept could look like in Egypt? Are there any fundamental differences or challenges that prohibit the transition to a waqf as a steward-ownership solution, i.e. bureaucracy or inflexible law?What can we learn from centuries of waqf-ownership regarding its strengths, its challenges, and its failures? As Egypt transforms rapidly and faces many challenges, data points towards the waqf being used less and less. What causes this decline?
We’re excited to dive into these questions and challenges and support the Egyptian team in whatever way they deem helpful in the next year. What an almost unreal chance it is for us to be in the front row seat for this work: to learn how steward-ownership evolves in a country facing massive challenges, to adapt those learnings to other regions and cultures. To spread the word about steward-ownership in the world.
A massive thank you: To the team of the Entrepreneurship Center for inviting us: Dr. Omar Ramzy, Menna Abd-Elhamed, Ahmed Sameh Saad, Marwan Amr-Ibrahim. To Helmy Abouleish and the whole Sekem team for hosting us at the Guesthouse. To all the wonderful people we encountered in the morning circle, at breakfast and dinner, around the farm. And special gratitude for Nana Woo, your presence and insights have made our trip memorable and so enjoyable.
Photos: Annika Schneider