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This is largely linked to the COVID-19 pandemic and Russian-Ukraine crisis (as highlighted above) as well as subsequent devaluation of the Egyptian pound and associated high inflation in the country.

Agriculture constitutes the main economic activity in Minya Governorate, employing 49.8 percent of labour. The governorate also accounts for 6.5 percent of the country’s arable land. The main crops grown include maize, sugar beet, sugar cane, and wheat, fruits (e.g. bananas, dates, figs, grapes, mango, olives and orange), vegetables (e.g. cucumber, onion, potato, tomato and watermelon) and medicinal and aromatic plants (e.g. coriander, anise, cumin, marjoram and thyme).

In Minya Governorate, women’s traditional role is mainly associated with domestic and care work, and women themselves, and their fathers/spouses, prefer that they do not work outside the household. On the other hand, traditional gender roles attribute to men the role of primary breadwinner and expect men to provide for all the household members.

Project Outcome

The Project will work towards achieving improvements in incomes, employment and nutritional status for some 2,000 vulnerable rural households in targeted rural communities from eight selected Hayat Karima villages of Minya Governorate. It is anticipated that the Project will create 2,000 full-time direct job/self-employment opportunities and another 2,000 indirect seasonal/part-time employment opportunities for vulnerable women, youth, PWD and men.

Project Outputs

The expected outcome of the Project will be achieved through generation of the following four outputs:

1. Gender-based socio-economic baseline surveys conducted, rural household livelihood needs assessed, project targeting strategy developed and eight villages and 2,000 beneficiaries selected (with the full involvement of local women’s focus groups).

2. Improved horticultural and small livestock productivity by 1,000 vulnerable smallholder men and women farmers – through the adoption of innovative and improved CSA and PHM technologies and practices and GAP principles. A minimum of 60 percent of beneficiaries will be women.

3. Increased income generation for 1,000 landless, unemployed or seasonally working rural women, youth and PWD– through the establishment of homestead-based micro and group-based small agri-food processing enterprises (MSEs) for value addition. A minimum of 90 percent of agri-business beneficiaries will be female.

4. Greater awareness of the gender-sensitive and nutritional value of horticultural and animal produce and healthy diets by 2,000 families in the eight targeted villages (including those of the women targeted through the FFSs and FBSs and support to micro and small-enterprise development).

The Project will make direct contributions to the following Government of Egypt’s strategies, plans, initiatives and programmes:

• The Economic, Social and Environmental dimensions of the ‘Sustainable Development Strategy: Egypt Vision 2030’ and its mission statement to “modernise the agricultural sector to achieve food security for all citizens and improve nutrition and standards of living of rural population, through improving efficiency of resources use and capitalizing on the geographic comparative advantages of different agricultural regions”.
• The MoSS’s employment and social protection ‘Economic Empowerment Programme (FORSA), launched by the Ministry in 2017, which supports beneficiaries of the World Bank-supported and MoSS-implemented Takaful and Karama conditional and unconditional cash transfer programmes targeting working age and persons with disabilities (PWD) members of needy households with low income to “shift from poverty to prosperity by enabling integration of the largest number into successful economic activities through innovation and sustainable partnerships with NGOs, public and private sector as well as leading global experiences”.
• The presidential ‘Hayat Karima Initiative (2019-2030)’ (Decent Life – Sustainable Rural Communities), which targets a total of 1,400 poor villages in Egypt (targeting some 45 million people) with the main objective of improving the quality of life in the poorest rural communities by paying particular focus to the establishment of basic infrastructure and provision of basic services such as health, education and water. Overall, this important Initiative provides a suitable framework, within which all development assistance programmes can operate in an integrated and synergistic manner for better impact and results on livelihoods and development of the rural people. Utilising funding opportunities from the Government of Norway in support of Hayat Karima would likely to pay off much higher in support of SDG Agenda in the country.
• Egypt’s National Pathways for a Successful Food Systems Transformation (2021)’ that identifies access to safe and nutritious food for all people, sustainable and healthy consumption patterns, nature-positive food production at scale, equitable livelihoods and value distribution and resilience in the face of vulnerabilities, shocks and stress as the top priorities in transforming national food systems and rendering them more effective.
• Two of nine priority mega-projects defined by the Government under its Energy, Food and Water Nexus (2022) rationale for support to reaching the country’s climate objectives while creating significant direct and indirect positive impacts on Egyptian citizens, namely: (4) Resilience for the most vulnerable and marginal regions; and (9) Improve agricultural climate resilience by modernising on-farm practices.
• The Government’s ‘2030 Updated Sustainable Agricultural Development Strategy’s’ to “increase modern technology and innovation that will lead to increased efficiency, link smallholder farmers to markets and increase untapped export capacity of agricultural commodities and products”. This, in turn, should lead to “increasing the competitiveness of agriculture and food system value chains while maximising income and increasing job opportunities, especially for rural youth and women – while helping to reduce the pressure on the limited resources of water and land, enhance capacity of the smallholder agriculture sector”.

The Project will further contribute to United Nations Sustainable Development Cooperation Framework for the Arab Republic of Egypt, 2023-2027, (UNSDCF): Outcome 2 (Prosperity), “By 2027, enhanced people-centred inclusive, sustainable and environmental economic/agricultural development driven by productivity growth, decent jobs, digitalisation and integrating the informal economy”; and Outcome 3 (Planet), “By 2027, enhanced climate resilience and efficiency of natural resource for all/rural people in a sustainable environment”.