El Sisi, ministers in London for Africa investment summit: Planning and Economic Development Minister Hala El Said, Trade Minister Nevine Gamea and International Cooperation Minister Rania El Mashat will join President Abdel Fattah El Sisi in London for today’s UK-Africa Investment Summit, according to Youm7. The event will bring together businesses, governments, and institutions to promote investment in Africa, and will be live-streamed here later today.

The World Economic Forum kicks off in Davos tomorrow: Setting the tone for this year’s event — themed “Stakeholders for a Cohesive and Sustainable World” — is a new WEF/PwC report (pdf) warning that more than half of the global economy (around USD 44 tn) is “moderately or highly dependent on nature…and is exposed to nature loss.”

Technical and legal committees from Egypt, Sudan, and Ethiopia will be in Khartoum this Wednesday to hammer out a draft agreement on the filling and operating timetable for the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) ahead of meetings at the end of the month, Ahram Online reports, citing a statement by Sudan’s irrigation ministry. The final round of US and World Bank-sponsored talks in Washington last week ended without resolving key points of disagreement. The sides will return to Washington on 28-29 January to finalize an agreement.

Saturday is a day off for any private-sector companies for whom it would normally be a workday in official observance of Police Day, which is also the anniversary of the 25 January revolution.

Our friends at AmCham will host US Ambassador John Cohen for its monthly luncheon on Tuesday, 28 January. Cohen will discuss prospects for commercial ties between Egypt and the US. Members can register for the event here.

CI Capital’s annual MENA Investors Conference gets underway on Tuesday, 28 January at the Four Seasons Nile Plaza. The three-day event will wrap on Thursday, 30 January.

Egypt ranks 58 Most Innovative Nation: Egypt is ranked 58 out of 60 countries in the 2020 Bloomberg Innovative Index; Egypt is one of four countries to make their debuts on the list this year. The annual report ranks countries based on metrics including their research and development spending, manufacturing capability and concentration of high-tech public companies. Germany snapped the top rank as the world’s most innovative nation, breaking South Korea’s six-year run.

Roula Khalaf took over from Lionel Barber as the Financial Times’ editor on Friday, making her the first woman and the first person of Middle Eastern origin to hold the position. Khalaf, who has been at the salmon-colored paper since 1995, has been deputy editor for the past four years, according to her bio.

***Did you miss our annual reader poll? We’re giving you one last chance to tell us what you think will happen in 2020 and maybe get an Enterprise mug and our very own coffee. Every year we ask you, our readers, to weigh in on what you expect for the year ahead: Are you investing? Do you plan to hire new staff in 2020? How do you think the EGP will perform? What’s your take on interest rates? Tell us, and we’ll share the results with the entire community in early January to help you shape your view of the year. The survey is quick, we promise.

You can take the Enterprise Reader Poll here.

As a token of our thanks, we’re going to send up to 50 readers their very own Enterprise mug and a bag of our special coffee blend, produced in association with our friends at 30 North. Want a chance to get a mug of your own? Make sure you give us your name and complete contact information at the bottom of the survey.

Passive fund managers would actually quite like a recession: A growing number of ETF providers believe that a recession could scare investors into pulling bns of USD from mutual funds and pile into low-cost ETFs, Bloomberg reports. It sounds strange, given that ETFs would almost certainly take a hit in the event of a market correction. But the theory is that a recession would over the long-term cause investors to dump their active funds in favor of their cheaper cousins. This is what happened in 2007-2008, which Rich Powers, head of ETF product management at Vanguard, argues was “one of the great catalysts” for the growth of the now-USD 4.5 tn industry.

(Remember: As we’ve noted before, nobody’s entirely sure will happen in a massive selloff, and ETFs are part of the problem. JPMorgan estimated in late 2018 that as much as USD 7.4 tn in assets “could be subject to forced selling by passive funds during the next downturn.” Deutsche Bank said at the same time that it saw an algo-led selloff as the biggest risk of 2019. As it is, the Wall Street Journal estimates that roughly 85% of all trading is on autopilot — controlled by machines, models or passive investing approaches.)

The success of passive fund management is “built on a fallacy” that they guard against human error, which is simply not the case, Jonathan Guthrie writes for the Financial Times. Funds tracking bonds and stocks don’t actually eliminate human errors because they essentially track the bonds and stocks selected by — you guessed it — humans. Passive fund management largely owes its success to the relatively minuscule fees they charge, which have put them on course to control over 25% of S&P 500 equity within the next eight years.

Investors look for inflation hedges as Powell eyes higher inflation: Money managers are channeling funds into safer Treasury inflation-protected securities (Tips), commodity-linked funds and gold to hedge against Federal Reserve chair Jay Powell’s push for higher inflation, the FT reports.

China will start talks with American companies to increase its imports of US-made goods after the two countries struck a “phase one” agreement that will see Beijing commit to buying USD 200 bn-worth of US goods over the coming two years, reports Reuters.

Feeling optimistic about how the US-China detente will improve 2020 investment prospects? Here’s a dose of scepticism to balance that out: The preliminary agreement between Washington and Beijing has pushed the global stock market to new records, but financial markets may be getting ahead of themselves, argues the Financial Times’ Michael Mackenzie. Optimistic investors, Mackenzie argues, aren’t giving enough consideration to future snags, including the fact that the phase one agreement won’t remove all of the US’ tariffs on China for another couple of years. Meanwhile, the RMB rally against the USD may be great news for those of us in emerging markets, but is more on the bad side for S&P 500 companies.

It’s kicking off again in Beirut: More than 100 people have been injured during clashes in Beirut as security forces fired tear gas, water cannon and rubber bullets at hundreds of anti-government protesters outside parliament, AP reports. Protests against government corruption and economic mismanagement began last October and led to the resignation of Prime Minister Saad Hariri and his cabinet at the beginning of November. Violence broke out again last week amid building frustration with politicians’ inability to form a new government and tackle the country’s economic crisis, the AP said.

World’s U15 table tennis champ gets corporate backing: Continuing with the theme of “Egyptians kick [redacted] at racquet sports other than tennis” (see: squash), we are delighted to note that the world under-15 table tennis champion is 12-year-old Hana Gouda, who recently signed up EFG Hermes’ consumer finance app ValU as her official sponsor.

*** It’s Blackboard day: We have our weekly look at the business of education in Egypt, from pre-K through the highest reaches of higher ed. Blackboard appears every Monday in Enterprise in the place of our traditional industry news roundups.

In today’s issue: We look at reactions to the Education Ministry’s decision to provide an avenue for exemption to its 20% ownership limit on private and international K-12 schools.