National Policies and Strategies
Where we work: Egypt
Egypt faces major global and domestic challenges in its quest to transform local food systems. With a population of 105 million, growing at a rate of 1.9% a year, Egypt has become increasingly dependent on imports to meet food needs. Recurring global food crises are strong reminders for countries, like Egypt, to rethink their investments and efforts to diversify food imports and exports. Egypt invests substantial resources on social protection programs and improving the targeting and efficiency of these programs remains important. In the longer term, Egypt would have to explore various options to balance the benefits of trade openness with the potential costs of vulnerability to trade shocks and domestic constraint in terms of environmental sustainability. Egypt needs to facilitate reorienting consumer policies and agricultural policies to produce healthier and more sustainable diets. These policies need to consider looming climate change, water scarcity and rising debt vulnerability in the region. This requires integrating and leveraging the nexus across food, land and water policies.
The CGIAR Initiative on National Policies and Strategies supports the Egyptian government and other stakeholders in addressing the above challenges. In particular, the Initiative is working with national partners to (i) assess and strengthen policy coherence across food, land and water policies at national level, and across the CGIAR initiative portfolio, (ii) strengthen the analytical capacity of national institutions, and (iii) inform rapid responses to crises. The Initiative is conducting policy analyses across several sectors to assess vertical coherence of food, land and water policies in Egypt. Furthermore, the Initiative informs national partners’ response to crises by integrating and deploying economy-wide tools and impact evaluation methods to evaluate (i) alternative policy scenarios and (ii) social protection programs to cushion the adverse impacts of global food crises. The Initiative also conducts policy outreach activities in Egypt under the Egypt National Policies and Strategies Seminar Series. Under the Egypt National Policies and Strategies Capacity Sharing Workshops Series, the Initiative trains researchers in national partner institutions – such as the Institute of National Planning – on Social Accounting Matrices and Computable General Equilibrium modeling.
Read about the Initiative’s work in other target countries: