I've interviewed hundreds of "experienced" engineers who could not code for the life of them. Not sure why you assumed the process is broken without first asking about it.
The talent in the Middle East & North Africa is very strong. We believe it's the next Eastern Europe, which used to export refugees and is now a hub of world-class talent.
The quality of folks coming from a very selective program in a different country, however, has selection bias in the opposite direction; nearly everyone from there is going to be better, on average, than the 'average' interviewer, because as mentioned elsewhere, roughly half (likely a bit more) of people we interviewed could not pass FizzBuzz, despite having stellar resumes.
We saw the same thing with MEET, which I helped teach a decade ago too.
These kind of programs select developers with much higher code fluency, which is usually the result of a deeper dedication to coding, either in a previous work experience, in their free time or taking part in additional training.
Or
You've interviewed hundreds of experienced engineers who are bad at coding during interviews and under the problems you're asking.
There's a person on the other end of that table. They haven't had the time to think about the problem that you have had.
But you said I shouldn't assume your process is broken. If those are your results the process is broken.
Either your pipeline of experienced engineers needs to be fixed.
Or your ability to judge either who is experienced
Or your ability to judge who can't code for the life of them.
Your comment made it sound like 51% of experienced ngineers looking for a job can't code when the truth is 51% of your experienced candidates can't. It is broken..