A Pharmacist Earns Less Than a Customer-Service Worker in Egypt

The scene needed only a few minutes to reveal its incongruity: a man in a Talabat delivery worker’s uniform riding an electric scooter through Cairo, carrying an order to a customer. When Mina realised someone was filming him on a phone, he answered immediately: “I am a pharmacist.”

Egypt’s pharmacists face overlapping difficulties: the erosion of independent pharmacies’ working capital, outdated legislation and institutional paralysis following the imposition of judicial receivership on their professional syndicate in February 2019.

On 13 February 2019, the Court of Urgent Matters ordered receivership following disputes within the syndicate’s board. The judgment was implemented on 30 April and a receiver appointed. The resulting suspension of elections left pharmacists without an elected negotiating body to press for government placements, fair tax agreements or enforcement of Ministerial Decision 499.

Reported figures put registered pharmacists at 370,000. Egypt has 74 pharmacy schools, including 23 at public universities, collectively producing about 25,000 graduates a year.

Low pay is not confined to pharmacy. Reported pharmacist salaries average EGP 8,000–12,000, while annual urban inflation reached 14.5% in August 2026.

Qualified for one profession, paid better in another

Mai Abdel Samad, a 2022 pharmacy graduate, tells Zawia3 that pharmacists at the large private hospital where she worked in 2024 earned EGP 5,500–5,800 a month. She had a year’s experience at the time.

Mai chose clinical work rather than medical marketing. Her shifts lasted 12 hours, from 8am to 8pm or the reverse. She describes them as exhausting, saying she spent the entire shift on her feet.

Now working at a government hospital, she puts salaries at EGP 6,000–6,900, rising to EGP 7,200 at some large hospitals. Unlike her private-hospital experience, she says the public-sector schedule gives her more room for freelance work or further study.

“Working for companies can be more profitable, but it gives you marketing experience rather than practical clinical experience,” Mai says. In her view, its advantage is financial.

Mahmoud Ali graduated in pharmacy in 2021, expecting his long years of study to lead to a pharmacy or pharmaceutical-company job. Entering the labour market changed that calculation: work in his profession did not bring the income he had anticipated, while the chemistry he had studied offered a more flexible alternative.

Ali turned to private tutoring. His day is now organised around teaching secondary-school chemistry, drawing on his scientific training, rather than filling prescriptions or standing behind a pharmacy counter.

Rami Khaled, a 2023 graduate, went straight into English-language customer service. For eight hours a day, he handles foreign customers’ complaints about satellite-dish wiring and disrupted television signals.

“The degree is no longer the most valuable asset,” Khaled tells Zawia3. “I work at Concentrix, and the English-language account pays more than any salary my pharmacist colleagues receive.” For him, changing professions was an economic decision.

His colleague Yahya Amin works in customer service at a bank. He says he did not fail at pharmacy; financial calculations forced his choice. He still practises for a few hours in the evenings at a pharmacy, but says the profession’s income no longer matches the years spent training.

Opening a pharmacy requires capital

Pharmacist Mohamed Adel identifies the cost of setting up an independent pharmacy as a major obstacle. A recent graduate without capital may find starting a business very difficult.

He estimates that even a modest pharmacy needs at least EGP 500,000 for premises, licences, furniture, shelves, lighting and other essentials—before building a substantial medicine inventory.

According to Adel, those costs have encouraged arrangements in which an investor pays a pharmacist to register the pharmacy in their name or serve as its nominal manager. Depending on location and the agreement, the payment can be around EGP 3,000 a month when the pharmacist’s role is limited to appearing on the paperwork rather than working on site.

Changing medicine prices create a further problem. A pharmacist may have stock bearing an old printed price while replacement supplies cost more. Selling the old packs at their marked price does not generate enough money to replace the same quantities.

Mohamed Sherif tells Zawia3 that repeated medicine-price increases produce two prices for the same product on a pharmacy’s shelves. Mandatory pack pricing prevents the pharmacist from recovering the full replacement cost of older stock, eroding both working capital and liquidity.

Selling yesterday’s stock at yesterday’s price can leave a pharmacy unable to buy the same quantity tomorrow.

Expired medicines also tie up cash. Sherif says producers and distributors impose difficult return conditions or delay regular collection. Although the Egyptian Drug Authority has supported return initiatives such as Wash Out, implementation obstacles can leave the value of expired stock unrecovered.

Sherif also criticises estimated tax assessments. He says operating expenses are allowed at only 7.5% of sales, whereas actual electricity, water, wages, rent and government fees can exceed 20%. In his account, the gap inflates taxable income and puts pharmacies under greater strain.

What remains of a pharmacy’s margin?

Ministerial Decision 499 of 2012 set pharmacist discounts at 25% on locally manufactured medicines and 18% on imported products. The report records disputes over compliance: manufacturers and distributors have sought reductions to 23% and 15%, while companies have also retained five percentage points of the prescribed discount.

Adel says pharmacists usually buy from two sources: pharmaceutical companies and wholesalers. Company discounts often run around 25%, sometimes falling to 18% or 16%; certain products, including infant formula and insulin, have lower discounts.

Depending on the product, wholesalers may offer 30%, 32% or 35%, and sometimes 50%, 60% or even 70%, according to his experience.

He cites a sexual-performance medicine with a list price of EGP 100 that he buys from a wholesaler for EGP 30—a 70% discount. Depending only on companies can leave a pharmacy with limited room to offer customer discounts and still cover its costs.

“If the pharmacist gets a 25% company discount and gives the customer a 10% discount, only 15 percentage points of the list price remain before rent, electricity, water, wages, taxes and wastage,” Adel explains.

His example is a modest pharmacy making EGP 100,000 in monthly sales. At a 25% gross margin, it earns EGP 25,000 before expenses.

Expired or damaged stock adds another burden. Adel says these calculations push pharmacists towards wholesalers offering bigger discounts.

Amr al-Shami, a young pharmacist, receives about EGP 3,000 a month for being registered on paper as the manager of a modest pharmacy. He also works hourly at a well-known pharmacy chain, where his monthly earnings do not exceed EGP 10,000.

Al-Shami says declining opportunities for government placements have deepened the crisis. Graduates once regarded placement as an almost assured bridge from university to employment, with a job and associated benefits.

Without that route, choices become harder: private-pharmacy employment, opening a business if capital permits, or combining several jobs.

Private pharmacies pay by hours worked, Adel says. Pharmacists can increase their earnings through longer hours or multiple shifts; some move from lower-income neighbourhoods to more affluent areas in search of better opportunities.

An old law and a changing medicine market

Sherif says pharmacy is governed by an old law that struggles to keep pace with commercial change and the scale of today’s market, despite subsequent amendments and regulations.

Law 127 of 1955 remains the basic legislation governing the profession and work within licensed pharmaceutical establishments.

He points to injections in pharmacies as an example of conflict between everyday practice and criminal regulation. For decades, residents obtained intramuscular and subcutaneous injections there as a quick community service that reduced demand on emergency departments.

After deaths involving severe allergic reactions to injected medicines, including antibiotics, prosecutors brought cases alleging involuntary manslaughter and practising medicine without a licence. The report describes subsequent official prohibitions on injections in pharmacies to avoid criminal liability.

Pharmacist Mostafa Magdy says mobile medicine-delivery services such as Shifa, Yodawy, Dawa Masr, Dawa Plus and Talabat connect patients with nearby pharmacies, accept uploaded prescriptions, facilitate insurance-related dispensing and deliver medicines to homes.

But commissions and required discounts take part of participating pharmacies’ margins, he says.

Law 127 prohibits selling or brokering medicines outside licensed pharmaceutical establishments. Professional bodies view unregulated delivery-app arrangements as raising questions about the responsible pharmacist’s direct control over dispensing and distribution.

Years of training, a search for a living

How does someone spend years learning a profession, only to discover that the best way to make a living may be to leave it? Pharmacists’ testimonies describe a search for sufficient income amid high start-up costs, working-capital erosion, price changes, difficult returns, expired stock, operating expenses and taxes.

With government placement less available, many cannot afford the alternative of owning a pharmacy. Mina inherited his father’s pharmacy, but accumulated debts forced its closure. He turned to delivery work to earn his living.