BLOG
BY MARIAM RAOUF AND YUMNA KASSIM
On Monday, March 14th, 2022, the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and the Delegation of the European Union (EU) to Egypt held a closing workshop for the project, “Building a Post-COVID-19 Recovery and Ag-Foresight Team in Egypt”. This event has marked the end of a successful project collaboration between the Delegation of the EU to Egypt, IFPRI, the Digital Transformation Unit at the Ministry of Agriculture and Land Reclamation (DTU-MALR), and Cairo University. The objective of the workshop was to present key analytical results and tools from the project’s activities.
In the opening session, Juana Mera-Cabello, Head of Sector II Operations: Economic Cooperation, EU, highlighted that the Ag-foresight project is part of EU’s portfolio and support for the development of the agricultural sector in Egypt, with special emphasis on promoting digital transformation especially after the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak. The project’s purpose of building an Ag-Foresight team at the Digital Transformation Unit at MALR, is to provide technical assistance to support the assessment of long-term strategic decisions, as well as to develop databases for agricultural production. Hence, the IFPRI-EU project consisted of delivering training on economy wide modeling, creating and designing post-COVID-19 prioritizations, as well as developing a spatial agricultural database to support agricultural policy and research in Egypt, as highlighted by Kibrom Abay, Egypt Program Leader and Research Fellow, IFPRI. Abay also emphasized the importance of further public-private partnership in supporting the Ag-Foresight team at the DTU-MALR, to ensure its sustainability.
The Ag-Foresight team at the DTU-MALR, in cooperation with Cairo University staff, was trained to use both online and offline versions of IFPRI’s economy-wide CGE models (AIDA-RIAPA). This economy wide model for Egypt and associated training was delivered by IFPRI staff, who conducted 10 online training sessions. These training sessions focused on implementing CGE simulations to assess the likely impacts of public agricultural investments on national and sub-national levels. CGE modeling can provide a powerful evidence-based tool to analyze the potential repercussions of recent crises such as COVID-19 and Russia-Ukraine war on the domestic economy.
In the first session, Alaa Said, DTU-MALR and Mariam Raouf, IFPRI presented the results of IFPRI’s economy wide model for Egypt to assess national investment scenarios, as well as the likely impacts of investing in dates, poultry, olive, and medicinal & aromatic plants value chains in Egypt. Main findings show positive benefit/cost ratios of investments in these value chains and the potential of these investments to improve growth and jobs creation, while reducing poverty. The poultry value chain, for example, was found to have the strongest impacts on job creation and poverty reduction. Additionally, production of medicinal and aromatic plants (MAPs) could be expanded in Egypt’s new lands as well, such as in Noubareya in Northern Egypt, to benefit from its proximity to export markets, thus reducing transportation and transaction costs. Also, targeting new export markets to absorb the increasing supply of dates production and/ or investing in dates processing activities, is essential.
This was also highlighted by Mohamed Zakaria, Professor at the Agriculture Economics Research Institute. Zakaria emphasized that the quality of agricultural commodities should comply international standards, especially with regards to the dates production. In addition, poultry value chain should be promoted by implementing an “integrated development approach”. This consists of establishing a cluster of inter-linked production processes, such as building production facilities for fodder, in addition to closed systems of highly developed slaughterhouses as well as processing and packing centers, and finally waste management system to comply with environment protection and biosecurity standards. Moreover, the institutional aspect should be further enhanced, by revitalizing the role of agricultural unions to support the farmers’ needs, especially with regards to providing fodders at reasonable prices as well as offering information on new marketing opportunities.
Mouchera Karara, Associate at Sovereign Fund of Egypt, additionally noted that investing in the agriculture sector is key, not only in terms of the expected economic gains, but also for its social benefits. Noting that the agriculture sector in Egypt is characterized by a high level of informality, Karara also mentioned that it is significantly helpful to use CGE modeling in assessing the economywide likely impacts of public investment in the agriculture sub-sectors, as it incorporates both the direct and indirect spillover effects, as well as the possible trade-offs between different policies. In addition, she recommended encouraging the partnership between public-private sectors in financing the required investment in the promising value chains, especially that they would generate high benefit to cost ratios.
Presentations from the second session of the workshop highlighted that high-quality agricultural data are critical for evaluating and monitoring the current state of agriculture in Egypt (e.g., yields, cultivated area and production of different crops). However, Egypt, faces substantial challenges of scattered and scarce data. To address this, the project developed the SPatial Agricultural Database for Egypt (SPADE) as a comprehensive platform housing over 1000 spatial and remote-sensing data layers categorized into the six thematic areas of: Urban area and market, Demographics, Agriculture, Agroecology, Soil and Water. Under each category, there are multiple layers of data, including time series data. Data layer examples include, Nightlight intensity, crop yields, distance to market, irrigation area, population density, average temperature, average rainfall, land cover and others.
In the second session Yumna Kassim, Senior Research Associate at IFPRI, showcased the online SPADE platform, that was developed in collaboration with the local web-development firm, CartoLogic. Kibrom Abay, IFPRI, then presented the underlying modeling work that went into building SPADE and examples of how it can be used in analysis to support evidence-based policymaking. Both highlighted that the sustainability and continuity of tools like SPADE may require private-public partnerships.
Gamal Siam, Professor Emeritus of Agricultural Economics at Cairo University and Senior Advisor at the Center for Agricultural Economic Studies, applauded the use of remote sensing data to have better policy formulation, especially in light of population increases and water scarcity.
He also further encouraged ground level validation to ensure the accuracy of the data. Additionally, Adel Zekaizak, Consultant of Digital Extension Services at the Food and Agriculture Organization, noted that the establishment of DTU-MALR is a great start to utilizing advanced data-based and modeling tools.
In his closing remarks, Mohamed El Kersh, Assistant to the Minister, Spokesperson, and Head DTU-MALR, acknowledged the EU and IFPRI’s efforts via the project to support to the establishment of the DTU at MALR. He recognized and applauded the current momentum towards digitalization, summarizing the current government policies with the special focus on enhancing digitalization, as accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
As a way forward, discussions emphasized on the importance of promoting investment in agricultural value chains, via fostering contract farming, improving the quality of exported agricultural commodities to comply with international standards, and enhancing public-private partnerships to sustain current efforts. Building on the foundation laid by this project, capacity strengthening in more sophisticated economy-wide modeling and spatial data use and analysis should be continued.
Visit Event Page to See Proceedings
Follow IFPRI EgyptSSP on Twitter
Share this blog on social media:
