Strategies and Suggestions to Reduce Poverty in Egypt

Introduction:
Poverty has spread into the whole globe, and most nations are suffering from lack of food and basic needs. One out of two children in the world are considered poor, and 3 billion people live with less than $2.50/day (Causes of Poverty, 2012). Sometimes it is easy to blame poor people for their situation because some are accusing them of being lazy, but most of the times the governments in poor countries are the one who blame. However, it is essential for the governments around the world to makeshift and end this problem. Egypt is one of the countries whose people suffer from poverty. In order for a country to develop, it is important to reduce the percentage of poverty in that country, and Egypt is one of the countries that have to initiate and reduce poverty. In 2010, the percentage of people who lives on less than $1.25 a day is around 25% of the whole population (Poverty and Equity, 2011). Poverty is one of the major reasons that led Egyptians to revolt against Hosni Mubarak who was the president of Egypt for 30 years. Egyptians after the revolution have high hopes on the new president Mohamed Morsi, who received 51.7% of the last presidential elections, to lower the poverty and corruption.
While Egypt has used a number of strategies to reduce poverty, much more remains to be accomplished. In this paper, I will provide background information on Egypt, I will examine the extent of poverty in Egypt, I will evaluate the strategies Egypt has implemented to reduce poverty, and I will provide suggestions for additional approaches to reduce poverty in Egypt.
Background on Egypt
The Arab Republic of Egypt is located in northern Africa bordering Palestine, the Mediterranean Sea, Sudan, the Red Sea, and Libya (The World Factbook, 2012). Egypt has 27 provinces and it has one of the highest populations in the Arab world. Around 80 people million live in Egypt, and Cairo has the highest population among all cities in Egypt with 7 million people, Cairo is also the capital of Egypt. The number of people who live in rural areas is decreasing because they are moving to big cities looking for jobs and a better living (Background note: Egypt, 2012). Egypt announced its independence from United Kingdom on February 28, 1922. The Egyptian economy was based on agriculture, but on the last two decades agriculture is about 35% of gross domestic product, and Egypt imports about half of its food and wheat mostly from Russia (United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, 2002). Egypt’s political system is a republic; it became a republic after the revolution in 1952 after King Farouk was forced to abdicate the the throne (The World Factbook, 2012). On January 25, 2011, Egyptians had followed the Tunisian revolution and rebelled against the government and president Hosni Mubarak mainly for the rising of unemployment rate and foodstuffs and low minimum salaries (The world factbook, 2012). On February 11, 2011, Hosni Mubarak was forced to abdicate. After months of recovering, Egypt had a presidential elections which eventually Mohammed Morsi won by 51.7% of the votes. He is the first president with no military background, and the fifth president of Egypt (Kirkpatrick, 2012)
Poverty in Egypt
Around 25% of Egyptians are considered poor and live below the national poverty line, this means that they spend less than $500 a year. According to The Egyptian Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics in 2011 a man’s/women’s poverty is related to his/her background, for example, knowing how to write and read, how many siblings does he/she has, and living in a rural area. Moreover, the study shows that a quarter of illiterate people are poor (Hussain, 2012). Below is a graph, which The Egyptian Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics had published, shows the percentage of poor people in Egypt according to the total poverty standard between years 1999/2000 and 2010/2011(Abdel Razek, 2011).

The percentage of poor people between years 1999 and 2011 had slightly increased and finally reached %25 in 2011. It is clear that any adapted strategies from the government are not affective on reducing the percentage of poverty in Egypt.
Egypt’s Strategies to Reduce Poverty:
Egypt has used three strategies to lift people out of poverty, with limited success: training programs for universities graduates and youth, educating rural girls, and providing basic food subsidies.
The Egyptian government had a global three-year partnership between Barclays and Unicef in 2008 to encourage the youth to attend training courses that may help them in their future careers and sharpen their skills. These courses concentrate on making the youth more self-sufficient and independent (Provost, 2011). It was a successful plan that the Egyptian government had adapted. On the other hand, that is considered a short-term strategy which affected a limited amount of people.
Moreover, the Egyptian government has also adapted a program called Ishraq, which means sunrise in Arabic, that provides rural girls, who have been margined, education. They focused on girls because women in rural areas have a high percentage of illiteracy, and they are being margined by the society. Ishraq has started since 2001 and they still offer education for almost 2000 girls aged 13 to 15 years old (Ishraq: Bringing Marginalized Rural Girls into Safe Learning Spaces in Upper Egypt, 2012).
The third strategy that the Egyptian government have adopted to reduce poverty is providing basic food subsidies for poor people. One of those basic foods is bread, and Egypt is importing 40% of the wheat. Although in recent years the price of wheat went high, the Egyptian government had the chance to make a deal with the Russian government to import wheat from Russia with a reasonable price. Egypt spends 3 billion dollars to provide food subsidy to poor people in Egypt. Some of the poor people come from far areas and stand in line for hours just to have bread and basic foods for their family. Food subsidies feed nearly two-third of the population (Egypt: Wheat subsidy system under strain, 2010). Although food subsidy strategy had affected and fed many poor people around the world and a vast of poor people are relaying on it, but it has never been the perfect solution to poverty. Providing food and making people relay on that system may make them more dependable and will never break the poverty cycle.
The Egyptian government had used three strategies to reduce poverty in Egypt, some have been affective and some are not; providing training courses for young people, educating girls in rustic areas in order to reduce illiteracy in the country, and giving poor people basic food subsidy.
Suggestions for Other Poverty-Reducing Strategies in Egypt One approach that Egypt has not used but might want to consider is making primary education mandatory to all population. There is a link between poverty and illiteracy. Nearly half of poor people in Egypt are illiterates (Egypt: Poverty rampant in rural areas, says new report, 2006). This approach might be successful for three reasons. First, primary school provides basic education and they can adopt many basic skills such as, math, reading, and writing, and this can give poor people the confidence and courage to involve more in the society. Second, making primary education mandatory might courage people to continue studying and accomplish higher degrees in education, and it will lead to expand the awareness of the society. Third, raising children in an educated environment can open many perceptions. The parents have major impact on their children, parents who cannot read nor write, may have a bad influence on their children and it could raise the percentage of illiteracy in the family. In short, forcing young Egyptians to go to elementary school may reduce the percentage of poverty in Egypt.
Conclusion
In conclusion, it is clear that the Egyptian government have tried to take over the poverty by adapting several strategies that I have mentioned in this paper. To understand the full poverty situation in Egypt; I gave a glance of Egyptian history, I covered some facts about poor people in Egypt, I pointed out three strategies that the Egyptian government had used to limit the percentage of poor people, and finally I suggested one way that the Egyptian government could use to diminish poverty and I supported that suggestion with three reasons. After I gave a hence of poverty in Egypt, it is obvious the blame cannot be on poor people only nor on their government. It is a complicated status that both sides have to combine their efforts to eliminate poverty.

References
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