Egypt Overview: Development news, research, data

The World Bank Group Board of Executive Directors approved the new Country Partnership Framework (CPF) for Egypt, laying out the World Bank Group’s strategy in the country for FY2023–2027.

The new CPF aligns with the Government of Egypt’s Sustainable Development Strategy (SDS), “Egypt Vision 2030,” and the National Climate Change Strategy (NCCS) 2050.

The CPF builds upon a strong set of World Bank Group analytics, including the Systematic Country Diagnostic, the Country Private Sector Diagnostic and the Country Climate and Development Report.

The CPF seeks to accomplish its objectives by achieving three high-level outcomes:

1. More and better private sector jobs: through supporting the creation of an empowering environment for private sector-led investments and job opportunities as well as creating a level playing field for the private sector.

2. Enhanced human capital outcomes: through supporting the provision of inclusive, equitable and improved health and education services as well as effective social protection programs.

3. Improved resilience to shocks: through strengthened macroeconomic management, and climate change adaptation and mitigation measures.

The CPF also intends to strengthen Egypt’s role in regional integration, which has positive implications for Egypt and potentially the broader region through enhanced regional trade and greater connectivity in infrastructure, transport, energy, and labor. Through the CPF the World Bank Group will also continue to support Egypt’s ambitions to lead the climate mitigation and adaptation agenda in the region, following its presidency of COP27.

Additionally, the CPF aims to integrate two cross-cutting themes—governance and citizen engagement, and women’s empowerment— across programs.

The CPF will be implemented jointly by the World Bank, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), and the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA), building on the three institutions’ current portfolios and adopting a flexible approach to lending. The CPF will be supported through a financial envelope of US$7 billion in lending (US$1 billion per year from IBRD and about US$2 billion during the entire CPF period from IFC), in addition to guarantees from MIGA. Partnerships remain a crucial component of the strategy.

Last Updated: May 05, 2023

The World Bank Group is supporting Egypt’s development agenda through its current active lending and advisory services portfolio with a focus on strengthening human capital, improving service delivery, building the country’s resilience to shocks, and addressing the pandemic and climate change, as well as the impacts of macroeconomic shocks. The active interventions include:

The Bank has supported the government in designing and scaling up social safety net programs under the Strengthening Social Safety Net Project with an IPF Loan for $400M signed in 2015. Building on the success of the Takaful and Karama program, an Additional Financing IPF loan for US$500 million was signed on September 11, 2019, bringing the total IBRD financing in support of the program to $900 million. As of December 2022, the program had reached about 5 million households (around 20 million citizens): 4.1 million households under the operation, 320,000 households under the old Daman pending issuance of the new law, and 600,000 households covered by the National Coalition for Community Development Work. Thanks to its adaptive shock responsive social registry and strong delivery system, the program efficiently expanded its coverage in recent years in response to consecutive crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic, the repercussions of the war in Ukraine, and the devaluation of the Egyptian pound. The project is piloting productive inclusion and graduation models in eight governorates under the "FORSA" program, to support the transition from protection to production and link beneficiaries to economic opportunities through asset transfer, wage employment and training, with a focus on women and youth. A new operation of $500 million was approved by the Board on December 22, 2022 to continue to support efforts to increase coverage and effectiveness of the Takaful and Karama Cash Transfer program, expand its social registry to support effective targeting of social protection programs, and enhance access of the poor and vulnerable to economic inclusion opportunities.
The Upper Egypt Local Development Program for Results (US$500 million) is improving local government capacity for quality infrastructure and service delivery to citizens and local firms in four of Egypt’s poorest governorates, Qena, Sohag, Minya and Assuit, which have a combined population of around twenty million inhabitants. Citizens in 20 cities, 400 villages and 2970 hamlets have benefited from the expansion and improvement of municipal services and infrastructure. This includes water and sanitation, local markets, vocational areas, local roads, public spaces and solid waste management. Over 3,300 firms have seen progress resulting from enhancing the management and quality of infrastructure in six industrial zones, reducing the time required to obtain construction permits and shop licenses and developing 14 clusters focusing on handicrafts, agribusiness, and other endogenous clusters in Upper Egypt.
Emergency Food Security and Resilience Support Project (US$500 million) will help cushion the impact of the war in Ukraine on food and nutrition security in Egypt. High prices and nutritional shortfalls affect people who rely on bread for their daily nutritional needs. The project links wheat imports to direct assistance to the poor and vulnerable population through Egypt’s Bread Subsidy Program. The aim of this project is to ensure the short-term supply of wheat for uninterrupted access to bread for poor and vulnerable households and to strengthen Egypt’s resilience to food crises. To date the project has procured 900,000 metric tons of wheat.
The Sustainable Rural Sanitation Services Program (US$850 million, including Additional Financing), will bring sanitation to about 1.73 million people in highly polluted villages and satellite areas of Sharkia, Dakahliya, Beheira, Menoufia, Damietta and Gharbia governorates in the Nile Delta, through household connections and wastewater treatment facilities. The program empowers and incentivizes local Water and Sanitation Companies (WSCs) to deliver effective, inclusive and accountable decentralized services. It is laying the groundwork for sustainable development of the sector by developing its water and sanitation sector strategy and supporting regulatory and tariff reforms. The WSCs have achieved their targets set under a performance improvement action plan, despite the impact of the pandemic. To date, 110,000 households have been connected to fully functional sanitation systems, and contracts covering over 230,000 household connections are being implemented.
The Inclusive Housing Finance Program for Results (US$1 billion, including Additional Finance) aims to improve the affordability of formal housing for low-income households in Egypt and to strengthen the Social Housing and Mortgage Finance Fund’s (SHMFF) capacity to design policies and coordinate programs in the social housing sector. The program is a top priority for the Egyptian authorities, with a 63% disbursement ratio. Since program inception, over 480,000 subsidies have been delivered to low-income households across Egypt’s 27 governorates. This has contributed to greater social and youth inclusion: Over 23% of the beneficiaries are women, 70% are below the age of 40 and 18% are below the age of 30.
The Bank-supported Egypt COVID-19 Response Project (US$50 million) was approved in May 2020 and will focus on immediate operational challenges and areas identified as critical gaps in Egypt’s national response to the pandemic. Project funds will complement the activities of Egypt’s COVID-19 plan by supporting costs associated with: (i) procuring and distributing medical equipment, including ICU and laboratory testing equipment and supplies, infection control products and PPE; (ii) “Corona incentive pay” for healthcare personnel undertaking COVID-19 related tasks; (iii) health worker training; and (iv) operation of designated quarantine, isolation and treatment centers.
In March 2021, the World Bank activated the Contingency Emergency Response Component (CERC - US$7.9 million) under the Transforming Egypt’s Healthcare System Project (US$530 million) to fund emergency response activities related to COVID-19 in Egypt. The main objectives of the healthcare system project are to: (i) improve the quality of primary and secondary health care services; (ii) enhance demand for health and family planning services; and (iii) support the prevention and control of Hepatitis C. The project benefits nearly 55 million Egyptians nationwide by improving services at 600 primary healthcare facilities and 27 hospitals. It conducted the largest screening campaign of its kind, the 100 Million Healthy Lives campaign. It screened 53 million Egyptian citizens and residents for Hepatitis C and noncommunicable diseases and risk factors, and it treated an estimated 1.2 million Hepatitis C patients.
The Supporting Egypt’s Universal Health Insurance System (UHIS) Project (US$400 million) was approved in June 2020. The project will support Egypt to implement the new UHIS, as envisioned in the newly passed Universal Health Insurance Law. This includes Phase I of its rollout in six governorates: Port Said, Suez, Ismailia, South Sinai, Luxor and Aswan. The governorates are home to about six million people, close to 6% of Egypt’s total population.
In April 2019, the World Bank approved the Catalyzing Entrepreneurship for Job Creation Project (US$200 million) which aims to create jobs and improve economic opportunities for Egyptians, with a focus on women and youth. This project provides a comprehensive package of financial (debt financing and equity investments) and nonfinancial support to traditional Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises, innovative startups, and high growth firms. It went into effect in January 2020. As of February 2023, the project had maintained and created 348,932 jobs and supported 183,068 beneficiaries — of which 43% are women and 43% are youth.
The Supporting Egypt Education Reform Project (US$500 million) supports a major government effort to improve teaching and learning conditions in public schools, with a focus on: (i) improving the quality of kindergarten (KG) education; (ii) enhancing the capacity of teachers, supervisors, and educational leaders and monitoring their teaching, mentoring, and leadership practices; (iii) the intensive use of alternative resources for teaching and learning; and (iv) the introduction of a new, higher order thinking skills-driven secondary examinations, governing access to universities. To date, the Ministry of Education and Technical Education: (a) administered grade 4 national assessment for literacy and numeracy and published results in June 2022; (b) conducted KG diagnostic studies and deployed results to develop new training modules to improve KG teaching practices; (c) developed and administered a new secondary examination system nationwide, driven by higher order thinking skills, and deployed the new item test bank and scoring software since the grade 10 cohort of 2018/2019 leading to the third wave of students sitting for the school graduation examinations in 2022/2023. These require training to enable teaching and nonteaching staff to create an item test bank (repository of test questions), manage the test administration and the scoring software of the tests, and disseminate the scores electronically less than a month after students are assessed. Training is expanding to more staff and teachers alongside the expansion of the new secondary examinations system to additional student cohorts; and (d) developed and made available curated resources through digital and TV educational channels to students and teachers in grades 4-12.
The Railway Improvement and Safety for Egypt, RISE Project (US$440 million) was approved in March 2021. The project will modernize signaling along the Alexandria-Cairo-Nag Hammadi corridor of the Egypt National Railway (ENR) network and help improve safety at select stations and junctions using a safe systems approach, which will include gender, citizen engagement and disability considerations. The project will introduce reforms, using performance-based funding, in accordance with best international practice, to support ENR to deliver high quality services at a lower cost through the adoption of Public Service Obligation and Multi-Annual Infrastructure Contracts. An estimated 1.4 million daily users of the railways will be able to rely on a safer and more reliable service.
The Cairo Alexandria Trade Logistics Development Project (US$440 million) was approved in September 2022. The project will improve the performance and support the decarbonization of the logistics and transport sectors in the Alexandria–6th October–Greater Cairo Area railway corridor. The project includes developing and adopting a transparent railway Infrastructure Access Charging (IAC) scheme for the Egyptian railway network to attract private sector participation; developing a regulatory framework including identifying the detailed scope and responsibilities of a railway regulator and the associated governance framework; and identifying and developing additional rail‐friendly policies to increase traffic on the railway network.
The Greater Cairo Air Pollution and Climate Change Project (US$200 million) was approved in September 2020 and became effective on June 9, 2021. The prime minister witnessed the signature of the inter-ministerial agreement establishing the terms of partnership between implementing agencies. The project will contribute to reducing air pollution and climate change emissions in Greater Cairo. Activities are focused on building responsiveness and resilience into institutions and systems, with an emphasis on the waste sector (treating and minimizing contaminated waste and establishing properly managed final disposal facilities) and reducing air and climate emissions from the public transport sector. The project aims to support an integrated climate and air quality management plan for Greater Cairo, the construction of an integrated waste management facility and the financing of a demonstration low/no emission ebus transport fleet and activities related to running it. These are expected to reduce the burden of air pollution on health and on the economy.
Implementation of WBG operations is informed and supported by a robust program of Advisory Services and Analytics (ASA) focused on disseminating analysis to inform interventions, building capacity, and leveraging lending. The WBG will continue to rely on partnerships with grant-making donors through existing trust funds and umbrella programs. Core analytics such as the Systematic Country Diagnosis (SCD), the Country Private Sector Development (CPSD) Report, and the Country Climate and Development Report (CCDR) have guided the development of the new CPF. Other Advisory Services and Analytics have guided the sectoral policy dialogue and reforms related thereto, including in macro-fiscal, health and population, education, infrastructure, gender and private sector competitiveness.