Those of you who know me know that I've been down with the flu for the past 10 days. During that time my lovely mom has been serving me the widest and most delicious variety of herbal teas. Inquisitive, I asked if they were of the local variety or some fancy imported label. I was told they were a Sekem production.

Q: Who are we?

A: A bunch of young Egyptian citizens with no political agenda who want Egyptian products to go global.

Q: What is the aim of this initiative?

A: It is an invitation to support Egyptian goods and services. This initiative has three main aims:

1) To promote the quality Egyptian brands and goods out there; encourage them to expand their market base and assist them to overcome being over-shadowed by the more prominent international brands.

2) To emulate a citizen driven consumer protection agency; make sure your voices are heard and your complaints reach the Egyptian manufacturers.

3) To identify profitable investment opportunities for young Egyptian investors; directing them to products and services not provided locally.

Q: Why should I buy the bad quality Egyptian product, which by the way is over-priced most of the time?

A: You shouldn't! That's not the objective of this initiative. We don't believe in commending that kind of behaviour on the part of incompetent inefficient producers. Our aim is to promote the hidden stars and to push the average products into improving. We are demanding higher quality, better packaging and more competitive pricing.

Q: What do you want me to do?

A: Try a new Egyptian product or service every day. Write in, let us know what you thought. Keep using the ones that you consider good value for money and dump the rest. Just let us know, so more of us can use the good ones and we can veer away from potential traps.

Q: What qualifies as local?
A: For our purpose there are different levels of local; we've listed them here sorted from most local to least local in our opinion:
1) Locally manufactured goods for a local brand.
2) Locally assembled good under a local brand. (PCs and technology products usually).
3) Locally manufactured goods for a global brand. (A product that says Made In Egypt).
4) Locally assembled products for international brands. (This being as loose a definition as we are willing to go).

Every other day my phone goes off and it’s an SMS to the effect of “Boycott Danish goods” or "Show solidarity to Palestine, boycott US products”. This has held true for Dutch products and of course products coming from the occupied territories. Now I’m all for it. I’m sure the 3 mobile operators are making a killing. Yet that’s not my concern. EU manufacturers have started to label goods as “Made in the EU”, them Europeans stick together and I applaud that, 3o2balna ya 3arab. So now your options are, being a devout concerned Arab citizen and all, is to boycott all US and EU products. So basically your options currently is to buy Asian.

I have a different proposition for you. Lets buy Egypt! Lets buy Arab products. Even better lets produce Arab products. Walk into your local supermarket and tally up what percentage of the products you’ve bought were manufactured locally. Then think to your purchase decision mechanism, did you automatically dismiss the local substitute for the global brand?I know it’s a lot to ask, and that yes you’ll miss your gourmet coffees, teas and meals. Yet for a change. Lets be proactive. Lets BUY EGYPT!