Policy Notes & Briefs

Targeting in development projects in Egypt: Approaches, challenges, and lessons learned

Effective targeting strategies are vital for almost all development programs. Universal approaches which provide aid to all individuals regardless of need are not always feasible given limited budgets and varying development priorities. Conversely, targeting directs resources to those in greatest need, ensures efficient allocation while upholding principles of social justice, equality, and the right to assistance.

This policy note summarizes the outcomes of a workshop held in Cairo on October 20, 2023, which brought together researchers, development practitioners, and policymakers. The high-level dialogue was part of the “Bridging Evidence and Policy” (BEP) seminar series, a collaborative initiative by the Egyptian Food Bank (EFB), the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), and the Sawiris Foundation for Social Development (SFSD). The BEP series serves as a platform for knowledge exchange and collaborative learning among donors, local and international implementers, and government representatives, with a focus on improving targeting in development projects. This note highlights the key discussions, offering insights into best practices and recommendations to enhance the effectiveness of program targeting.

Challenges for private sector job matching in rural Egypt: Results from a survey of Forsa employers

Increasing formal employment for youth and women is a key goal of the Forsa pilot graduation intervention and Egyptian government policy in general. As detailed in Forsa evaluation reports, matching Takaful beneficiaries with jobs in the private sector is a major challenge on the household and on the beneficiary level. In this policy note, however, we examine the challenges from the perspective of potential employers. We review literature of the market failures that may contribute to difficulties with job matching in rural Egypt and present results from a small telephone survey of Forsa employers.

Digital literacy training to promote diffusion of digital agricultural tools to smallholder farmers

Digital innovations hold significant potential to address multiple forms of market failures. However, their adoption remains low and heterogenous across Africa. Smallholder farmers face significant barriers in accessing essential information, limiting their ability to seize market opportunities and enhance profitability. While numerous digital tools have been developed for farmers in the region, most are still in pilot phases. The landscape of digital agricultural innovations in Egypt, the focus of this study, presents a similar outlook, whereby the Egyptian market has an array of innovative digital study, presents a similar outlook, whereby the Egyptian market has an array of innovative digital agricultural tools that offer different services to farmers (including digital advisory agricultural and market services). Several demand and supply-side factors contribute to the low adoption of these digital innovations and their disparities among smallholder farmers in Africa and Egypt. On the supply side, the most important challenges include inadequate public and private investment in complementary infra-structure, unsustainable business models, and a misalignment in the pace of innovation. The most important demand-side challenges include lack of digital literacy, insufficient context-specific needs assessments, digital divide, and accessibility, usability, and user trust. User confidence and trust in digital tools is another important but understudied topic.. However, we lack empirically grounded evidence on alternative supply and demand-side interventions to enhance the adoption and scaling of digital innovations in various contexts, including Egypt.

Key findings from midline evaluation of Egypt’s Forsa graduation program

Forsa is a pilot economic inclusion program implemented by the Ministry of Social Solidarity (MoSS) in Egypt. The goal of the program is to graduate beneficiaries of Takaful to economic self-reliance by enabling them to engage in wage employment or small-scale productive enterprises. The Forsa program began in 2023 after significant delays. Obstacles to implementation included the Covid-19 pandemic, Egypt’s economic crisis following the Ukraine-Russia war, and administrative challenges with procurement approvals.

Challenges for private sector job matching in rural Egypt: Results from a survey of forsa employers

Increasing formal employment for youth and women is a key goal of the Forsa pilot graduation intervention and Egyptian government policy in general. As detailed in Forsa evaluation reports, matching Takaful beneficiaries with jobs in the private sector is a major challenge from the perspective of households. In this policy note, we examine the challenges from the perspective of potential employers. We review literature of the market failures that may contribute to difficulties with job matching in rural Egypt and present results from a small telephone survey of Forsa employers.

Smallholder farmers’ participation in profitable value chains and contract farming : Evidence from irrigated agriculture in Egypt

Key messages The participation of smallholder farmers in high-value and profitable value chains as well as contract farming remains low in Africa.  Farmers with limited land resources are more likely to devote a larger share of their land to low-value crops such as cereals while this pattern weakens with increasing land size and slightly reverses for high-value crops such as spices and herbs.  Smallholders in Egypt face a trade-off between ensuring food security to their house holds and maximizing profit, and land plays a major factor in moderating this trade-off.  Younger and wealthier farmers are more likely to participate in the cultivation of high value crops such as spices and herbs as well as contract farming.  There exist strong complementarities between participation in high-value value chains and contract farming.

Egypt’s Takaful Cash Transfer Program: Impacts and recommendations from the second round evaluation

Egypt’s national cash transfer program, Takaful, and its sister program Karama covered 17 million poor beneficiaries as of 2022, about 16 percent of the Egyptian population. Takaful was designed in 2015 as a conditional cash transfer program providing income support targeted to the most vulnerable, namely poor families with children under age 18. As one of the largest programs — both in absolute terms and in terms of share of the population covered — in the wave of national cash transfer programs spreading across Africa, as well as an innovator among countries in the Middle East, Egypt’s experience has the potential to serve as a model for these regions.
The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), in collaboration with the Ministry of Social Solidarity, conducted a first-round evaluation of the program in 2017 to estimate its effects on household well-being (Breisinger et al. 2018). That evaluation found large positive impacts on several outcomes, most notably, household consumption. The second-round evaluation, conducted in 2022, found a shift toward greater investment in physical and human capital among program beneficiaries. This brief summarizes the main findings from that second-round evaluation, noting differences from the first evaluation results and providing key recommendations.

Forsa pilot evaluation baseline survey results

The Forsa program, launched in 2021 by the Egyptian Ministry of Social Solidarity has been designed as a graduation program targeted to current beneficiaries of the Takaful cash transfer program. To understand how well Forsa supports household income generation and to better understand the beneficiary household characteristics which may relate to program success, the International Food Policy Research Institute in collaboration with the Ministry of Social Solidarity is running a randomized control trial of the pilot Forsa program (see IFPRI MENA Regional Program Policy Note 21 for more details on the program and evaluation design). A baseline household survey collected in January-February 2022 provides a detailed picture of the eligible households in the targeted communities, including the employment situation and work-related skills of the household members intending to participate in Forsa. The household survey data was collected in the eight governorates of the pilot: Beni-Suef, Sharqia, Qalyoubia, Luxor, Fayoum, Menia, Souhag, and Assuit. 24 households Forsa-eligible households were surveyed in each of 323 communities: 16 households from the pool of current Takaful beneficiaries and 8 from the pool of Takaful rejected applicants. The final sample size was 7,752 households. Each household was asked whether they were willing to enroll in Forsa and, if so, which household member would participate in the trainings. 83% of sampled eligible households indicated willingness to enroll in Forsa. The large majority of these (77%) indicated a preference for the self-employment track.

Egypt: Impacts of the Ukraine and global crises on poverty and food security

Global food, fuel, and fertilizer prices have witnessed rapid and significant increase in recent months, driven largely by the fallout from the ongoing war in Ukraine and associated sanctions im-posed on Russia. Other factors, including governments’ responses and export bans, have also con-tributed to rising prices (Laborde and Mamun 2022). Palm oil and wheat prices increased by 56 and 100 percent in real terms, respectively, between June 2021 and April 2022, with most of the in-crease occurring since February 2022.

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Forsa pilot program and evaluation plan

Forsa, which means “Opportunity” in Arabic, is a new economic inclusion program of the government of the Arab Republic of Egypt. Implemented by the Ministry of Social Solidarity, the program aims to graduate beneficiaries of the national cash transfer program, the Takaful & Karama Program (TKP), from being dependent on transfers from TKP to economic self-reliance by enabling them to engage in wage employment or sustainable economic enterprises. The most recent World Bank Economic Inclusion report (Andrews et al. 2021) highlights a recent increase globally in such graduation or economic inclusion programs, which now reach around 92 million beneficiaries from 20 million households across more than 75 countries. This rapid growth is raising demand for evidence on best practices in graduation program implementation. Egypt’s experience with Forsa can contribute to such guidance.

Remote sensing data for monitoring agricultural production and economic activity: Application in Egypt

This policy note showcases two examples on how remote sensing data can be used for monitoring agricultural production and economic activities. The first case aims to generate granular data on agricultural production, which remain scarce in Egypt and the MENA region. The second case demonstrates the potential of remote sensing data to monitor economic activities during the COVID19 pandemic. Based on these data and together with other recent findings, we provide the following recommendations to facilitate post-COVID-19 recovery in Egypt: ► Targeting of stimulus and recovery packages based on the economic repercussions experienced across geographies and sectors ► Identifying and supporting promising value chains which experienced a significant slowdown in economic activities ► Diversifying economic activities and markets to improve the resilience of agri-food systems. ► Investment in data infrastructure to monitor and respond to future shocks. This may be supported by scale up of digital solutions, which proved to be effective in sustaining business activities even during the pandemic.

Investing in dates, poultry, olive, and medicinal and aromatic plants value chains in Egypt: Assessing the economy-wide impacts

This policy note summarizes an evaluation of public investment options for Egypt’s agri-food system conducted by the International Food Policy Research Institute in collaboration with the Ministry of Agriculture and Land Reclamation of the Government of Egypt and Cairo University. We quantitatively assess the expected economy-wide impacts of investing in four promising agricultural value-chains: dates, poultry, olives, and medicinal and aromatic plants (MAP). As part of the analysis, a range of agriculture-related public investments along the value-chains are considered, including spending to expand farm production and promotion of downstream agri-processing and marketing. We use two IFPRI structural models. The Rural Investment and Policy Analysis (RIAPA) economywide model is used to capture linkages between economic sectors, households, and rural-urban economies and to measure changes in economic growth, household welfare, and employment within and beyond the agri-food system. RIAPA is linked to the Agricultural Investment and Data Analysis (AIDA), the second model, which tracks investment impacts and costs over time. Inter alia, we find that: Investments into each of the four agricultural value chains enhance growth, create additional employment opportunities, improve household welfare, and reduce poverty. The MAP and poultry value chains are the most promising value chains with regard to all four evaluation criteria. However growth generation is largest if investment is concentrated in the MAP value chain, while investment into the poultry value chain has the strongest impacts on job creation and poverty reduction. Investments into primary production and processing, besides having a strong direct impact on the value chain growth, generate significant indirect effects inside and outside the agrifood system. These indirect effects are largest for the MAP value chain.

Supporting Egypt’s safety net programs for better nutrition and food security, inclusiveness, and effectiveness

The long partnership between the Government of Egypt and the International Food Research Institute (IFPRI) began in the late 1970s but became much more active with the launch of IFPRI’s Egypt Strategy Support Program (ESSP) in 2016. Over the years, IFPRI’s research, with support from PIM since 2012, has informed important decisions on Egypt’s key safety net programs, including the food subsidy and the national cash transfer programs. This summarizes some of the most recent outcomes of this work.

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Land scarcity and input intensification in smallholder irrigated agriculture in Egypt

Increasing population pressure and population density in many African countries are inducing land scarcity and land constraints. These are expected to trigger various responses and adaptation strategies, including agricultural intensification induced by land scarcity, as postulated by the Boserup hypothesis. However, most empirical evaluations of the hypothesis come from rainfed agriculture and mostly from sub-Saharan Africa, where application of agricultural inputs remains historically low. Agricultural intensification practices and the relevance of the Boserup hypothesis in irrigated agriculture (and where application of improved inputs is high) remains unexplored. We investigate the implication of land scarcity on agricultural intensification and the relevance of the Boserup hypothesis in the context of Egypt, where agriculture is dominated by irrigation and input application rates are much higher than elsewhere in Africa. We find that land scarcity increases overapplication of nitrogen fertilizer relative to crop-specific agronomic recommendations. This implies that land constraints remain as important challenges for sustainable agricultural intensification. Finally, we find suggestive evidence that such overapplication of nitrogen fertilizers is not yield-enhancing, but, rather, yield-reducing. We also document that land scarcity impedes mechanization of agriculture.

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Climate change and Egypt’s agriculture

With climate change, Egypt’s already arid climate will face even higher temperatures and lower rainfall over key agricultural areas, requiring further urgent adaptation investments. Data from three general circulation models of climate were used to better understand the likely effects of climate changes on Egypt’s agricultural sector. The findings show largely adverse biophysical effects of climate change by 2050. Compared to a no-climate change scenario, yields for food crops are projected to decline by over 10 percent by 2050 due to higher temperatures and water stress as well as increased salinity of irrigation water. The highest biophysical yield declines are estimated for maize, sugar crops, and fruits and vegetables. Moreover, due to the country’s dependence on food imports, Egypt is not only affected by climate change impacts at home, but also by impacts in other food producing countries. Climate change-induced increases in food prices will reduce Egypt’s food import demand, while also dampening demand for Egypt’s exports. The implications for Egypt are tighter food markets with both reduced domestic production and increased difficulties to import food making it more difficult to augment domestic food supplies. This situation suggests the need for investments in climate change adaptation in the agriculture sector. Global cooperation to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions is also warranted given the high cost to Egypt’s society from adverse climate change impacts worldwide.

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Climate change adaptation strategies for Egypt’s agricultural sector: A ‘suite of technologies’ approach

Climate change negatively affects Egypt’s agriculture sector. This brief summarizes the results of a modeling exercise to examine a range of climate change adaptation approaches to counteract agricultural productivity declines. Rather than simulating a single technology, a ‘suite of technologies’ approach was used. For several food crops, none of the technology suites, individually or in combination, are shown to counteract the adverse impacts of climate change. For these crops, which include maize, oilseeds, pulses, and sugar, even stacking of technologies will not return productivity to pre-climate change levels. However, for fruits and vegetables, potatoes, rice, and wheat, crops less adversely affected by climate change, increased investments in climate changeresponsive crop traits, soil fertility improvement, water management, crop protection, or a combination of these technologies can counteract the adverse impacts of climate change on agricultural productivity. From a perspective, strong cooperation with the rest of the world on climate change adaptation will ultimately benefit Egyptian consumers. Doing so will reduce disruption of global food markets, which is of particular importance for countries, like Egypt, that are well integrated into those markets. In particular, Egypt’s economy and all Egyptian consumers benefit from the importation of lower-value, high water-consuming cereals under the hotter and drier conditions that can be expected in Egypt in the future due to climate change.

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Symposium policy note 2: Digitalization of agricultural services and policy analysis in Egypt

This policy note is one in a series of four notes that summarize key findings and recommendations from 32 seminars organized by IFPRI between 2016 and 2020 under the Evaluating Impact and Building Capacity Project funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and from related research done in collaboration with national and international partners in Egypt. The briefs have been prepared on the basis of a joint symposium and are intended to give policymakers and program designers in the areas of social protection, nutrition, agricultural policy, and the digitalization of agriculture a quick overview of research-based recommendations on key policy issues that will better enable Egypt to achieve several of the goals outlined in the Sustainable Development Strategy 2030. This policy note highlights how digital tools can help improve monitoring, evaluation, and extension services in Egypt’s agriculture sector and how policy analysis can be institutionalized to guide transformation of the food system and rural economies. Four recommendations are discussed: Building on ongoing efforts, continue to digitize agricultural information systems, build and link agricultural databases, and exploit new sources of data. Build on ongoing projects that develop mobile telephone applications for farmers and learn from international experiences to revitalize and digitalize agricultural extension in Egypt. Build the capacity of agricultural policy analysts within the Ministry of Agriculture and Land Reclamation and universities, using both conventional and new digital tools to provide high-quality, research-based policy advice. Promote further digitalization to improve the resilience of food systems in view of shocks, such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

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COVID-19 and the Egyptian economy: From reopening to recovery: Alternative pathways and impacts on sectors, jobs, and households

Although the global economy is forecasted to shrink by 4.4 percent in 2020 (IMF 2020), the Egyptian economy is proving resilient to the immense human and financial costs caused by the global COVID-19 pandemic. This resilience is mainly explained by the successful implementation of the economic reform program since 2016 that provided more fiscal space to withstand the adverse impact of the COVID-19 crisis. However, that Egypt’s economy is holding up is also due to the rapid response and proactive measures to limit the impact of the virus that were implemented by the Egyptian Government since March 2020 (MPED 2020). These enabled the country to avoid a full lockdown policy (Figure 1). While Egypt posted negative economic growth rates from April to June 2020 at the height of the crisis, overall economic growth was still positive at 3.6 percent for fiscal year (FY) 2019/20. This estimate is only slightly lower than the initial projection of the impact of the pandemic on Egypt’s economy of an annual economic growth equal to 3.8 percent, as estimated by staff of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and the Ministry of Planning and Economic Development (MPED) (Breisinger et al. 2020). The deviation between the early and final estimate can be mainly explained by the lower than expected growth rates in the manufacturing and health services sectors and the better than expected performance of the trade and transport sectors. A joint note by the International Food Policy Research Institute and the Ministry of Planning and Economic Development of the Government of the Arab Republic of Egypt.

Symposium policy note 4: Moving nutrition further up the development priority list in Egypt

This policy note is one in a series of four notes that summarize key findings and recommendations from 32 seminars organized by IFPRI between 2016 and 2020 under the Evaluating Impact and Building Capacity Project funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and from related research done in collaboration with national and international partners in Egypt. The briefs have been prepared on the basis of a joint symposium and are intended to give policymakers and program designers in the areas of social protection, nutrition, agricultural policy, and the digitalization of agriculture a quick overview of research-based recommendations on key policy issues that will better enable Egypt to achieve several of the goals outlined in the Sustainable Development Strategy 2030. Addressing all forms of malnutrition – both undernutrition and overnutrition – remains a human and economic development challenge that Egypt must overcome. This brief highlights three areas of action to significantly improve the nutritional status of all Egyptians: Make domestic food policies more nutrition-sensitive and incentivize food producers and marketers to shift to the production, processing, and marketing of healthier foods. Expand ongoing awareness and educational campaigns, such as the 100 Million Healthy Lives initiative, to promote improved nutrition and to disseminate nutrition knowledge. The COVID-19 pandemic is an additional reminder and rationale for investing in healthy diets and sustainable food systems. Promote research to make nutrition policy more effective and efficient, including by increasing collection of nutrition-related data and better sharing of already collected data among ministries, research institutes, and other stakeholders.

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Symposium policy note 1: Enabling farmers to lead food system transformation and resilience in Egypt

Agricultural and food policies will play an important role in making Egypt’s food system fit for future challenges, including resilience to shocks, such as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. This brief highlights the importance of enabling farmers so that they can contribute significantly to a broader transformation and to resilience of Egypt’s food system and rural economy. Five areas of action are highlighted: Invest in a renewed system of agricultural extension services, with an emphasis on new technologies and production systems and on nontraditional crops. Ease rigidities for farmers and increase the market orientation of the agriculture sector, including markets for fertilizer and staple crops. Revisit the current irrigation management system to allow for the adoption of new irrigation technologies and increased efficiency of water usage. Support the development of agro-processing value chains where there are missing markets or market frictions in order to achieve a sustainable and nutrition-sensitive food system. Coordinate agricultural policy with policies of other government ministries to support rural transformation and employment opportunities off the farm.

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Symposium policy note 3: Cash transfers as an effective tool for social protection and shock response in Egypt

This policy note is one in a series of four notes that summarizes key findings and recommendations from 32 seminars that IFPRI organized between 2016 and 2020 under the Evaluating Impact and Building Capacity Project funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and from related research done in collaboration with national and international partners in Egypt. The briefs have been prepared on the basis of a joint symposium and are intended to give policy makers and program designers in the areas of social protection, nutrition, agricultural policy, and the digitalization of agriculture a quick overview of research-based recommendations on key policy issues that will better enable Egypt achieve several of the goals outlined in the Sustainable Development Strategy 2030. Social protection programs are essential for supporting Egyptians who are economically the most vulnerable. This brief makes the argument for moving more decisively toward a cash-based social protection system in Egypt. Four areas of action are highlighted: Continue the well-functioning Takaful and Karama program and consider increasing its budget to adjust transfers to inflation. Consider improving the targeting for Tamween food subsidies and integrating Takaful and Karama with Tamween. Continue the use of transparent and independent impact evaluations to assess social protection programs in order to maximize their benefits for Egypt and its people. Maintain the ability to respond flexibly to future shocks as an important feature of solidifying the national social protection system.

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Investing in the agri-food system for post-COVID-19 recovery: An economywide evaluation of public investments in Egypt

This note presents the results of an evaluation of public investment options for Egypt’s agri-food system. Nine agriculture-related public investments are considered, including targeting public spending to expand farm production, e.g., irrigation improvements, input subsidies, agricultural research, and extension, and to promote downstream agro-processing and marketing. The outcome indicators considered are economic (GDP) growth, incomes of the poor, job creation, and dietary diversity. IFPRI’s Rural Investment and Policy Analysis (RIAPA) economywide model is used for the evaluation because it captures linkages between sectors, households, and rural-urban economies and measures changes within and beyond the agri-food system. RIAPA is linked to the Agricultural Investment and Data Analysis (AIDA) module that tracks investment impacts and costs over time. The ranked results of the public investment options considered, summarized in the table here, can help prioritize agri-food system investments for post-COVID-19 recovery.

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Winners and losers from COVID-19: Evidence from Google search data for Egypt

Evolving pieces of evidence show that services are hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, both globally and in Egypt. Employing Google search data, we examine the implications of COVID-19 on demand for various services in Egypt. • We find that demand for those services that require face-to-face interaction, including hotels and restaurants, air travel and tourism services, significantly dipped after Egypt detected the first COVID-19 case and more so after the Egyptian government introduced major restrictions and curfews. For instance, in the first two months of the outbreak of the pandemic, February and March, demand for hotel and restaurant services contracted by about 70 percent. • In contrast, demand for services that substitute or reduce personal interactions, such as information and communications technologies (ICT) and delivery services, have enjoyed a significant boost. Demand for ICT services tripled, while demand for delivery services doubled in the four months since the outbreak of the pandemic. • Intuitively, these results suggest that individuals and enterprises operating in these sectors are expected to experience heterogenous impacts and damages associated with the pandemic. Our results, along with other evolving evidence, reinforce that those services and sectors negatively affected by the outbreak and spread of COVID-19 deserve attention. • Finally, our analysis highlights the potential of near real-time "big data" to substitute and complement conventional data sources to estimate economic impacts and, hence, inform immediate and medium-term policy responses.

Impact of COVID-19 on the Egyptian economy: Economic sectors, jobs, and households

The COVID-19 crisis may lead to a 1.1 percent decline in Egypt’s GDP during the 4th quarter (April to June) of the 2019/20 fiscal year, compared to the same quarter in 2018/19. Without the Government of Egypt’s COVID-19 emergency response package, GDP in Q4 may have declined by 8.7 percent. Tak-ing the emergency response pack-age into account, we estimate an annual growth rate of 3.8 percent for FY 2019/20. Without the emer-gency response package, annual growth for FY 2019/20 may have been as low as 1.9 percent. The services sector is hit hardest, falling by 10.9 percent, followed by industry at -8.3 percent. Agriculture is the most resilient sector. However, these losses are lower than those expected in comparable countries, especially those that resorted to extended periods of full lockdowns. Impacts on Egypt’s agri-food system are less severe than elsewhere in the economy. Most damage will occur in nonfarm components of the agri-food system due to falling consumer demand. Although higher-income households face the largest income losses, lower-income households also will see their incomes decline significantly. The level of social protection required to fully offset the income losses of poor households is likely to be prohibitive, especially given falling revenues from reduced economic activity. Continuing to gradually open the economy again will be critical for avoiding permanent job losses and increases in poverty for the coming year. The process of re-opening the economy may also provide opportunities for fostering more private sector-driven and sustainable economic transformation.

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COVID-19 and the Egyptian economy: Estimating the impacts of expected reductions in tourism, Suez Canal revenues, and remittances

Egypt’s recent economic success will almost certainly be interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. We examine the likely impact on the Egyptian economy of a significant reduction in tourism, payments received from the Suez Canal, and remittances from Egyptians working abroad because of the slowdown in the global economy due to the COVID-19 virus. Our results suggest that COVID-19 could reduce national GDP by between 0.7 and 0.8 percent (EGP 36 to 41 billion) for each month that the global crisis continues. Similarly, household consumption and expenditure is estimated to decline on average by between EGP 153 and EGP 180 per person per month, which is between 9.0 and 10.6 percent of average household income. The cumulative loss in GDP from these three external shocks alone could amount to between 2.1 and 4.8 percent of annual GDP in 2020 if the crisis lasts for 3 to 6 months. While the country’s focus currently is rightly on fighting the health crisis and mitigating its immediate impacts, planning on how to re-open the economy should also start now.

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Leveraging agricultural interventions for improving nutrition in Egypt

The success of nutrition-sensitive agricultural interventions in countries in the Middle East and North Africa has not been examined in much depth. To narrow this knowledge gap, a smallholder farm household survey was conducted in six governorates in Upper Egypt in April and May 2018 following the winter cropping season. The survey provides comprehensive information on agriculture, nutrition, and health. Specifically, the study sought to identify potential levers and challenges along the agriculture-nutrition impact pathways, with attention to value chain development approaches for promoting horticulture. This policy note presents findings from the survey. It should be useful in the design and implementation of nutrition-sensitive agricultural programs in Upper Egypt.

Egypt’s Takaful and Karama cash transfer program: Evaluation of program impacts and recommendations

Egypt has been providing cash to poor households through its first conditional cash transfer program, Takaful and Karama, a social protection program run by the Ministry of Social Solidarity (MoSS), since March 2015. Takaful (“Solidarity”) supports poor families with children under 18, while Karama (“Dignity”) supports the elderly poor and people living with disabilities. The cash transfer program has enrolled 2.25 million families across all of Egypt’s governorates. The amount of the Takaful cash transfer provided to households depends on the number of children and their school level. The Karama program provides a set amount per individual. In order to reach the poorest households, participants are selected using a proxy means test. In the Takaful program, 89 percent of recipients are women, while only 11 percent are men. Beginning in 2018, Takaful will also begin implementing conditionalities, requiring households in the program to ensure their children attend school and participate in health screenings, added to antenatal care for pregnant women and post-natal care. The Takaful and Karama program was evaluated by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) using both quantitative statistical methods (simple questions asked to many households during a survey) and qualitative methods (more in-depth questions asked to fewer households in longer interviews). The evaluation was designed to measure and explain the impacts of the cash transfers on household welfare, and to examine whether the program’s criteria for household selection were effective in identifying poor households. This brief, which focuses on the Takaful component of the program, summarizes the main findings from the evaluation and key recommendations.

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2015 Nutrition country profile: Egypt

The 193 individual country profiles capture the status and progress of all UN Member States, and the 80+ indicators include a wealth of information on child, adolescent and adult anthropometry and nutritional status, in addition to intervention coverage, food supply, economics, and demography. This tool is particularly useful for nutrition champions at the country-level, as it presents a wide range of evidence needed to assess country progress in improving nutrition and nutrition-related outcomes.

Egypt: Agricultural R&D indicators factsheet

This country factsheet presents key agricultural R&D indicators in a highly accessible visual display. The publication also features a more in-depth analysis of some of the key challenges that the country’s agricultural R&D system is facing, and the policy options to address these challenges.

2014 Nutrition country profile: Egypt

Building resilience to conflict through food security policies and programs: An overview

One and a half billion people still live in fragile, conflict affected areas. People in these countries are about twice as likely to be malnourished and to die during infancy as people in other developing countries.2 This outcome is often a direct consequence of conflict: conflict reduces food availability by destroying agricultural assets and infrastructure.

Tackling Egypt’s rising food insecurity in a time of transition

Owing to a succession of crises and worsening poverty, food security in Egypt started to deteriorate as early as 2005. These crises included the avian influenza epidemic in 2006; the food, fuel, and financial crises of 2007-2009; a further rallying of global food prices starting in late 2010; and the challenging macroeconomic context that followed political instability in the wake of the 2011 revolution (see Figure 1). Egypt’s net food-importing status (that includes importing 45-55 percent of its wheat needs) makes it vulnerable to fluctuations in international food prices.

La banca para los pobres: como liberar los beneficios de las microfinanzas

This policy brief is designed to help policymakers and practitioners understand the financial services needed by the poor. It is based on a five-year IFPRI research program that examined, among other issues, the roles government should play in providing financial services to meet the needs of the poor, through a series of detailed household surveys conducted in nine countries of Africa and Asia: Bangladesh, Cameroon, China, Egypt, Ghana, Madagascar, Malawi, Nepal, and Pakistan.... [The brief asks us to consider these questions:] What kinds of financial services do the poor value? What economic activities are the poor engaged in, and what implications does this have for the type of services to be provided? What are existing sources of financial services, and how do the poor use them? What combination of financial instruments—credit, savings, insurance — are best developed, given specific demand from different types of clients? Do delivery systems (credit union, village banking, group-based lending) take into account the prevailing socioeconomic environments or local organizational systems? What unconventional methods do the poor use to secure loans? Can these collateral substitutes be used within a more formalized banking system? In the lending or granting of public resources, are incentives in place to encourage competitive, sustainable, efficient, and entrepreneurial microfinance institutions? Are regulations in place that govern mutually supportive transactions between the clients (borrowers) and institutions (lenders), such as deposit insurance and contract enforcement? Are prudential regulations, such as accounting practices and reporting requirements, balanced so that they ensure sustainability, good management, and accountability of microfinance institutions without stifling innovation? Would the introduction or expansion of microfinance services in a region be one of the most socially cost-effective ways to alleviate poverty there, given the state of infrastructure and markets, the availability of services, and the existence of other antipoverty and development programs in the region?

Weighing what's practical: proxy means tests for targeting food subsidies in Egypt

Despite achieving a significant cost reduction over the past two decades, the absolute cost of food subsidies in Egypt is still high relative to the benefits received by the poor. There is scope for better targeting food subsidies, in particular those for rationed cooking oil and sugar, both because reforms in this area are perceived to be far less politically sensitive than adjusting subsidy policies for bread and wheat flour and because higher income groups presently receive a significant percentage of the benefits. Targeting the high-subsidy green ration cards to the poor and the low-subsidy red ration cards to the nonpoor will require identification of both poor and nonpoor households. An International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) research team in Egypt, in collaboration with the Egyptian Ministry of Trade and Supply, developed a proxy means test for targeting ration cards. This paper describes the process of moving from the optimal income-predicting model to the final model that was both administratively and politically feasible. An ex-ante evaluation of the levels of accuracy of the proxy means testing model indicates that the model performs quite well in predicting the needy and nonneedy households. An effective and full implementation of this targeting method would increase the equity in the ration card food subsidy system and, at the same time, lower the total budgetary costs of rationed food subsidies. Moreover, the experience gained under this reform would facilitate targeting future social interventions to reduce and prevent poverty in Egypt.

Avoiding chronic and transitory poverty: evidence from Egypt, 1997-1999

This paper uses a panel data of 347 households in Egypt to measure changes in household consumption between 1997 and 1999 and to identify causes behind the changes. Per capita consumption decreased for the households during this time and, while not dramatic, it occurred at all points along the distribution. Over the two-year period, the number of households that fell into poverty was over twice as large as the number of households that climbed out of poverty. About two-thirds of overall poverty was chronic (average consumption over time was below the poverty line), and almost half of all poor were always poor. We use quantile regression methods to identify the factors that explain total, chronic, and transitory poverty. While our analysis ably documents the extent of transitory poverty, it does not explain well the determinants of this type of poverty. The predominantly chronic nature of poverty in the sample, and our ability to identify associated characteristics, strengthens the case for targeting antipoverty interventions such as food subsidies.

Dietary diversity as a food security indicator

Household food security is an important measure of well-being. Although it may not encapsulate all dimensions of poverty, the inability of households to obtain access to enough food for an active, healthy life is surely an important component of their poverty. Accordingly, devising an appropriate measure of food security outcomes is useful in order to identify the food insecure, assess the severity of their food shortfall, characterize the nature of their insecurity (for example, seasonal versus chronic), predict who is most at risk of future hunger, monitor changes in circumstances, and assess the impact of interventions. However, obtaining detailed data on food security status—such as 24- hour recall data on caloric intakes—can be time consuming and expensive and require a high level of technical skill both in data collection and analysis. This paper examines whether an alternative indicator, dietary diversity, defined as the number of unique foods consumed over a given period of time, provides information on household food security. It draws on data from 10 countries (India, the Philippines, Mozambique, Mexico, Bangladesh, Egypt, Mali, Malawi, Ghana, and Kenya) that encompass both poor and middle-income countries, rural and urban sectors, data collected in different seasons, and data on calories acquisition obtained using two different methods. ....[D]ietary diversity would appear to show promise as a means of measuring food security and monitoring changes and impact, particularly when resources available for such measurement are scarce.

Banking on the poor: unleashing the benefits of microfinance

This policy brief is designed to help policymakers and practitioners understand the financial services needed by the poor. It is framed within lessons learned from a five-year IFPRI research program that examined, among other issues, the roles government should play in providing financial services to meet the needs of the poor. Insights presented here are based on a series of detailed household surveys conducted in nine countries of Africa and Asia: Bangladesh, Cameroon, China, Egypt, Ghana, Madagascar, Malawi, Nepal, and Pakistan.... [The brief asks us to consider these questions:] What kinds of financial services do the poor value? What economic activities are the poor engaged in, and what implications does this have for the type of services to be provided? What are existing sources of financial services, and how do the poor use them? What combination of financial instruments—credit, savings, insurance — are best developed, given specific demand from different types of clients? Do delivery systems (credit union, village banking, group-based lending) take into account the prevailing socioeconomic environments or local organizational systems? What unconventional methods do the poor use to secure loans? Can these collateral substitutes be used within a more formalized banking system? In the lending or granting of public resources, are incentives in place to encourage competitive, sustainable, efficient, and entrepreneurial microfinance institutions? Are regulations in place that govern mutually supportive transactions between the clients (borrowers) and institutions (lenders), such as deposit insurance and contract enforcement? Are prudential regulations, such as accounting practices and reporting requirements, balanced so that they ensure sustainability, good management, and accountability of microfinance institutions without stifling innovation? Would the introduction or expansion of microfinance services in a region be one of the most socially cost-effective ways to alleviate poverty there, given the state of infrastructure and markets, the availability of services, and the existence of other antipoverty and development programs in the region?" -- Text

Rural Finance Policies 1 - The demand for financial services by the rural poor

This policy brief summarizes lessons learned from IFPRI's multicountry program on rural finance and household food security with regard to the poors’ demand for financial services. The lessons are derived from detailed household surveys conducted in nine countries of Asia and Africa: Bangladesh, Cameroon, China, Egypt, Ghana, Madagascar, Malawi, Nepal, and Pakistan.

The determinants of employment status in Egypt

Egyptian labor market is moving from a period of high overall unemployment to one where unemployment is increasingly concentrated among specific groups whose access to the private-sector labor market is limited. Educated young women are more adversely affected than their male counterparts by the transition to a private-sector-led economy. There is no systematic link between youth unemployment among new entrants and poverty unless it is the head of the household who is unemployed. An economic policy environment that is favorable for labor-intensive, export-oriented industries would help absorb the new entrants into the labor market, and the prospect is particularly good for young female workers. Policymakers should consider a reduction in the female-specific employer mandates (such as the existing provision for a generous maternity leave) that raise the cost of hiring women.

La mujer: la clave de la seguridad alimentaria

El papel de la mujer en la economía se ha subestimado con frecuencia y su trabajo en la agricultura ha sido invisible por mucho tiempo. Las autoridades normativas, pese a haber en focado los programas de población, salud y nutrición en la mujer dentro de su función reproductiva, la han desatendido como agente de producción. Sin embargo, esa situación está en proceso de cambio....El Instituto Internacional de Investigaciones sobre Políticas Alimentarias (IFPRI) asigna alta prioridad a la investigación destinada a comprender mejor el papel de la mujer en la agricultura y la seguridad alimentaria. El trabajo del IFPRI en ese campo comenzó con una serie de estudios sobre los efectos de la comercialización agrítudios en el ingreso de la mujer, el con sumo de alimentos y la nutrición de la fa milia y del niño. Ahora, por medio de un programa de investigación multinacional de "fortalecimiento de la política alimentaria por medio del análisis intrafamiliar", los investigadores del IFPRI examinan los procesos de adopción de decisiones dentro de la familia para determinar cómo se asignan los recursos en ese medio. Esas investigaciones se hacen con el fin de obtener la información necesaria para el diseño y la ejecución de políticas alimentarias más eficaces teniendo encuenta las diferencias existentes entre el hombre y la mujer en lo que respecta al acceso a los recursos productivos y al control ejercido sobre los mismos, al interés en el desarrollo y la seguridad alimentaria y a la respuesta a los incentivos para el desarrollo..." (Prefacio)

Women: the key to food security

This brief examines the key roles that women play in ensuring food security and makes three recommendations of ways to strengthen the food security through policies and programs that enhance women's abilities and resources to fulfill their roles.

Wheat policy reform in Egypt: adjustment of local makets and options for future reforms

Determinants of poverty in Egypt, 1997

The political economy of food subsidy reform in Egypt