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Rural poverty in Egypt
Despite impressive economic growth in recent years, Egypt faces many challenges in maintaining sustainable growth and addressing economic, social and regional inequalities. Due to the uncertain situation prevailing in the country after January 2011, revenue from tourism has decreased sharply and there has been a reduction in remittance income – with almost 300,000 Egyptian workers reported to have returned home due to turmoil in Libya and other parts of the region. Even before the events of 2011, the global economic slowdown that began in 2008 had adversely affected growth and employment in Egypt. And growth has been increasingly threatened by inflation, particularly soaring food prices, which have worsened the situation of the poor. Income inequality has also persisted in Egypt, despite periods of high growth. Unemployment rates are highest among young people and women in rural areas, who are seriously affected by the lack of economic opportunities. The clear divisions between a moderately well-off urban sector and a poor rural sector are likely to persist for some time. Who are Egypt’s poor people? According to the World Bank, Egypt had almost 18 million people living beneath the national poverty line as of 2008, and three-quarters of them lived in rural areas. Most of the country's rural poor people live in Upper Egypt, where there are higher rates of illiteracy and infant mortality, poorer access to safe water and sanitation, and larger numbers of underweight children. One of the greatest constraints hindering agricultural growth and self-sufficiency in Egypt is the limited availability of irrigated land in a country that receives hardly any rainfall. With almost all of the population confined to the Nile Valley and Delta, and their desert fringes, Egyptians have long been concerned with increasing cropped acreage and reclaiming land for agriculture. Another constraining factor is Egyptian agriculture’s high sensitivity to climate change, which could reduce production of some major crops by 20 per cent within 40 years. Why are they poor? Although most people in Upper Egypt depend on agriculture for their livelihood, smallholder farming in this region does not provide them with sufficient food security and income. Most Smallholders have limited access to water, in terms of both quality and quantity. In addition, they have very small landholdings compared to those in Lower Egypt, they cultivate crops that have a low market value and generate limited income, and they do not have adequate access to financing and credit. Alternative employment opportunities are lacking in Upper Egypt because of the limited development of microenterprises or other non-farm economic activity. Local markets are underdeveloped, and marketing infrastructure – including transport and storage facilities – is poor, while producers’ associations are not well organized. Source: IFAD |
Egypt |
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