Enabling poor rural people
to overcome poverty
The country evaluation process
The Near East and North Africa Division (NENA) of IFAD will begin to prepare a new country strategic opportunities paper (COSOP) for Egypt starting in late 2004. The new COSOP will launch a new programming cycle. NENA requested the Office of Evaluation (OE) to undertake a country programme evaluation (CPE) as a forerunner to the strategy formulation process. The main objectives of the CPE are to: (i) assess the results and impact of IFAD operations; (ii) draw lessons and insights from the experience so far; and (iii) provide building blocks for a new COSOP for Egypt.
Cooperation between IFAD and Egypt began more than 25 years ago. Since then, IFAD has supported nine projects in Egypt with a total loan commitment approaching USD 189.4 million and total project costs of USD 490.0 million. The Government of Egypt (GOE) contribution to these projects amounted to USD 145.0 million. By 2004, four projects were completed, four are on-going, and one is not yet effective.1 Lending terms have been highly concessionary for five of IFAD’s loans and intermediate for four of them. IFAD has supported other activities through Technical Assistance Grants albeit on a smaller scale. The CPE followed IFAD’s new methodology for country programme evaluations, as well as the Methodological Framework for Project Evaluation.2
The CPE team was fielded in March/May 2004.3 Starting in Rome, the team met with NENA, OE and UNOPS staff before going to Egypt. On arrival in Cairo the mission met with officials from the Ministry of Agriculture and Land Reclamation (MALR), Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation (MWRI), Ministry of Local Development, and the Principal Bank for Development and Agricultural Credit (PBDAC). The mission also met international donors, including the WB (WB), UNDP, FAO, the Office of the Italian-Egyptian Debt for Development Swap (IDS), bilateral donor agencies including Deutsche Gessellschaft für Technische Zusammen Arbeit GTZ, German Development Bank (KfW), and USAID, and selected NGOs.
The team visited the five projects in IFAD’s current portfolio and sought evidence through discussion with officials from the relevant governorates, implementing agencies, Bank for Development and Agricultural Credit (BDAC)s and above all, project area beneficiaries. At project sites the team worked with project managers and counterparts in their offices and in the field. The mission conducted field assessments of impact, participation and gender equity through focus group discussions and individual interviews with over 700 beneficiaries, leaders and officials. The mission prepared a detailed aide-memoire that was discussed with senior officials at a wrap-up meeting at MALR in Cairo on 3 May 2004. The final CPE report was presented and discussed at a round-table workshop in Cairo on 23-24 March 2005.
The agricultural and rural development context
Agriculture is a key sector of the Egyptian economy and the foundation of the rural economy. Agriculture still provides a livelihood for 55% of the population that has been estimated at about 70 million in 2003 and employs directly 34% of the labor force. The incidence of rural poverty has been estimated at 22% in 2000. Agriculture contributes about 17% of GDP and 20% of foreign exchange earnings. An increasing share of Egyptian agriculture is devoted to exports although Egypt imports about 40% of its food requirements.
Egyptian agriculture can be divided geographically into two parts: Upper and Lower Egypt where Upper Egypt comprises the Nile Valley from Giza south and Lower Egypt comprises the Nile Delta from Cairo north. These lands can be further divided into “oldlands” and “newlands.” Oldlands are found in the Nile Valley and include the land that was claimed from the desert many generations ago. Newlands include land that has been claimed relatively recently (post 1950) – or is in the process of being claimed now. Most farms in Egypt are small, with an average of about two feddans, or less. Farms in Upper Egypt are generally smaller than in Lower Egypt.
Agriculture has been a key source of economic growth in Egypt for generations. Significant macro and sectoral market-oriented reforms were begun by the GOE in the mid-1980s and higher agricultural sector growth has been achieved as a result of the policy changes and agricultural innovations. Over the past 20 years, agricultural productivity has grown substantially and by international standards. Egypt is in the front rank of world producers of several commodities including rice, sugar cane and sorghum in terms of yields. This was done in a framework that recognized the need for growth with equity, sought rural poverty reduction, and targeted women and the landless.
The GOE formulated two major Agricultural Development Strategies in the framework of its comprehensive economic reform programme started in the late 1980s. An Agricultural Strategies for the 1990s with emphasis on efficient and environmentally-sustainable management of land and water, market development and promotion of the private sector, and provision of social safety nets. A more recent Agricultural Strategies until 2017, which continued the reform process, made even clearer than before the importance of both the farm and off-farm sectors to the rural economy, the need for basic rural infrastructure, and the overarching value of a competitive environment. To alleviate the negative effects of reform on the poor, the government established a Social Fund for Development (SFD) in 1991, created a National Programme for Integrated Rural Development (SHROUK), and in 1996 created a Ministry of Rural Development, renamed the Ministry of Local Development in 1999.
While Egypt’s reform programme has been a macroeconomic success and good progress has also been made in terms of human development4, rural poverty and some social indicators remain a concern. Overall, Egypt’s poor number about 10.7 million. Of these, 29% are urban and 71% rural, with an urban poverty rate of about 9% and a rural poverty rate of about 22%. However, the sharpest distinction in poverty rates is between Egypt’s metropolitan areas (with 2% to 5% poverty rates) and Lower Egypt (with 5% to 19% poverty rates), on the one hand, and rural Upper Egypt (with 30% to 50% poverty rates) on the other. Most of Egypt’s poor live in Upper Egypt and rural areas of Upper Egypt contain the highest concentration of Egypt’s poor. High rates of job growth in rural areas is essential if rural poverty is to be reduced and the gap between Upper and Lower Egypt is to be closed.
Egypt today faces challenging external economic circumstances and the cost of servicing its foreign debt is under review. The GOE seeks to limit foreign borrowings to projects that can repay loans, finance more social development from grants, restrict foreign borrowings to projects with large foreign exchange components, mobilize more local funds, and give priority to infrastructure. As a result, borrowing for rural poverty reduction may be used less often and mobilizing non-concessionary loans will require greater creativity and a more effective dialogue than in the past.
To achieve its mandate of rural poverty reduction, IFAD concentrates its efforts on three strategic objectives: (i) strengthening the capacity of the rural poor and their organizations; (ii) improving equitable access to productive natural resources and technology; and (iii) increasing access to financial services and markets.5 Since 1995 IFAD has sought to be an innovator, identifying and spreading more effective approaches to rural development that serve the poor. IFAD is also committed to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) that guide international efforts to cut global poverty in half by 2015.
Within this framework for rural poverty reduction, IFAD’s strategy for the NENA region is focused on four themes: (i) empowering the rural poor to give them a voice in shaping their lives; (ii) diversifying rural income; (iii) reducing gender inequalities; and (iv) improving natural resource management. The scarcity of water is considered to be a most critical and urgent issue. Achieving IFAD’s objectives in the NENA region is stated to depend on four activities – policy dialogue, strategic partnerships, knowledge management and impact management.6
IFAD’s programme in Egypt has been guided by four activities: (i) a Project Identification Mission (PIM) in 1979; (ii) a General Identification Mission (GIM) in 1989; (iii) a GIM in 1993; and (iv) a COSOP in 2000.
Until 2000 IFAD investments in Egypt have resulted from missions focused on projects. Egypt did not benefit from Special Programming Missions for strategy articulation as did many other IFAD borrowing countries during the 1980s and early 1990s. Equally important, during this period IFAD’s approach in Egypt did not adjust sufficiently despite the changed economic and policy environment, government agricultural policies and strategies and the rural poverty profile. The two main thrusts of the programme: supporting settlements on the newlands and increasing productivity of the oldlands remained largely unaltered. Similarly, the bulk of IFAD investments remained in Lower and Northern Upper Egypt, whereas the highest poverty incidences are in the rural areas of Southern Upper Egypt. The first full-fledged IFAD strategy for Egypt is included in the COSOP of 2000. The document provides a comprehensive approach to strategy formulation with good analytical quality and relevance to rural poverty, GOE policies, and IFAD’s mandate. However, the COSOP covered a wide spectrum of areas and referred to far more concepts than can reasonably be expected to be implemented in a programme that adds only one new project every three years. The COSOP introduced only two new interventions, of which a new style of projects (Matruh II) was approved in 2002. However, it is not clear from available documents that it is justified in terms of COSOP priorities or in strategic term for the emerging rural poverty profile.
Five other conclusions regarding IFAD’s strategy in Egypt should be highlighted for the benefit of future strategy formulation processes. First, while IFAD has leveraged more resources from other donors over time, it has only cooperated with few, namely the WB and the IDS.7 This contrasts with IFAD’s stated policy ambition of increasing partnership in operations in Egypt. Second, IFAD has built a strong successful relationship with GOE mainly via MALR. While work in irrigation and water management and community-based rural infrastructure lends itself to expanding partnership with other agencies, e.g. MWRI, the SHROUK, as well as NGOs, this did not fully materialize and needs to be stressed in the future. Third, IFAD’s special concern for women is not noticeably reflected in its interventions despite IFAD’s full awareness of its importance. More recently a technical assistance grant was approved to strengthen gender mainstreaming in two ongoing projects, and efforts in this direction should be enhanced.
Fourth, while IFAD (since 1995) seeks formally to be innovative and support pilot actions, only some elements of its support in Egypt can be considered innovative. The design of one project (SRDP) was innovative in the context of Rural Upper Egypt and IFAD support to APIP has resulted in more attention being given to farming systems research (FSR), a relatively new concept in the context of Northern Upper Egypt. The rest of the programme has mostly provided support along fairly well-established lines.
Fifth, IFAD’s portfolio of projects in Egypt cannot be defined yet as a fully integrated “programme.” IFAD has supported a set of development projects but appears not to have invested much in the complementary activities stated in its NENA strategy and the COSOP, and the phasing needed to create a programme. For example, evidence of IFAD support for an engagement in knowledge management, policy dialogue and advocacy, and promoting replicable innovations – all important to IFAD since the mid 1990s – is modest. This has resulted in part from IFAD’s lean structure, operating without a resident country presence and from its dependence on cooperating institutions to supervise project implementation. Another reason is the apparent limited complementarities and appropriate sequencing between the use of the grants and loans instruments in the portfolio.
Notwithstanding the above, the IFAD approach followed in Egypt registered many positive achievements (see following section). The main positive outcome was a portfolio of projects of good value to MALR, reflecting government priorities at the time. It was successful in that it provided a series of self-contained agricultural development projects that when well implemented affected positively the socio-economic conditions of the rural poor in respective project areas. The downside of such an approach was the modest responsiveness to the changing context of rural Egypt over many years of progressive reform by the GOE, and a relatively low profile of IFAD’s efforts and experience among actors in socio-economic development in Egypt. The latter limited the opportunities of learning, sharing experiences and influencing others for a larger-scale impact on rural poverty reduction.
IFAD has committed more than half its funds (see paragraph 2) to four newland settlement projects in Lower Egypt8 and about 30% of its funds to three agricultural development projects in Northern Upper Egypt9. More recently, IFAD has supported a rural infrastructure development project in Southern Upper Egypt (SRDP) and a natural resource and environmental management project in Egypt’s Northwest Coastal Zone (Matruh II).10 These data indicate that new land settlement in the Delta region has received the lion’s share of IFAD support while poorer governorates of Southern Upper Egypt have received much less.
IFAD’s commitments to Egypt by sub-sector are greatest for rural credit (40.2%) followed by rural infrastructure (20.8%), and agricultural research and extension (10.5%). The approximately 30% remaining is spread over nine additional activities. During implementation as projects were restructured, the actual expenditure pattern changed and a high proportion of the funds committed to credit were redirected to infrastructure.
Programme performance11
Relevance of the Programme. Overall, most projects have objectives that are highly relevant to the IFAD and GOE strategies (at the time of design) as well as to the rural poor. The relevance of the portfolio is therefore judged as substantial. The extent to which the programme was relevant to the poorest is less so.
Effectiveness of Closed Projects. On the basis of a review of the evaluation and completion reports of the four closed projects and discussion with partners in Egypt, the CPE judged the effectiveness of the two closed land settlement projects in the Delta (WBSP and NASP) as “substantial”. The projects have achieved most of their main objectives. WBSP successfully restructured a large state farm, allocated the land to households, improved irrigation in an area subject to soil salinity and water logging, increased productivity substantially on 9 500 feddans and successfully increased and resettled some 1 700 families and increased their income. The project contributed to the now prosperous economy of the West Delta and sustainability could be judged as likely, provided emerging water quality issues are tackled successfully. WBSP’s credit component was not implemented and credit funds were reallocated to infrastructure.
NASP focused on resettlement in newlands of the Nile in the Delta. NASP achieved its major objectives in providing services to more than 35 000 settlers on 169 000 feddans of newlands. Settlements were improved, new employment was created and yields and production and income increased substantially. Most importantly, absenteeism by settlers fell sharply. Implementation of the credit component was problematic and less than 25% of the targeted households were served with loans. Sustainability was judged overall as likely and institutional development was substantial.
The objectives of the two closed projects in Northern Upper Egypt have only been partly achieved and their effectiveness is judged as moderate. The Minya Agricultural Development Project (MADP) aimed to improve small farm productivity by strengthening research and extension services and credit. The project targeted farms with less than three feddans but did not discriminate in favour of the poorer households or the landless. A classic Training and Visit System of Agricultural Extension (T&V) approach was introduced that was active when financial incentives motivated the staff. The extension system had been strengthened and output increased, but weak monitoring meant that productivity gains attributable to the project could not be rigorously estimated. Implementation was very slow and MADP closed ten years later than planned, which delayed benefits substantially. Some institutional development was achieved and links were improved between the research and extension services but sustainability is uncertain given the overstaffing and the inability of GOE to continue financing high levels of staff incentives. The credit component was not adequately conceived and larger landowners used project subsidized credit.
The Fayoum Agricultural Development Project (FADP) was comparable to MADP but implemented faster, closing after only a three-year delay. The project aimed to improve the transfer of agricultural technology and the supply of credit to small farmers. The number of target farmers supported under the project was lower than planned and improvement in agricultural productivity attributable to FADP was unknown. The extension at project closing was still regarded as “fragile” and in need of additional support. The project emphasized crop production over livestock and women farmers were not served. Like MADP, the credit component was not successful. More than half the loans made were fraudulent and many were diverted to household consumption.
Overall effectiveness of closed projects was lower than it could have been for three main reasons. First, implementation everywhere (except for NASP) was slower than planned and two projects (WBSP and MADP) experienced major delays. Their implementation period extended to 11 and 16 years, respectively. Second, both IFAD and the GOE agreed to finance unplanned activities from project funds, and planned support for institutional development and for credit was reassigned to infrastructure. Third, achievements with respect to social and human capital development objectives – notably with respect to women and the landless – were below expectations.
The policy effects of closed projects are not high, but policy dialogue as an IFAD objective was formally established only with the COSOP in 2000: the 1979 PIM and the 1989 and 1993 GIMs included little sectoral analysis and did not recognize policy dialogue as an objective. While IFAD showed a genuine concern for small farmers, it did not seek to influence the policies or strategies of the GOE that impinged on its other target group - women and the landless.
Effectiveness of Ongoing Projects. Except for APIP, which is quite advanced in implementation, the effectiveness of the ongoing projects in achieving their objectives can only be partially assessed. APIP supports improvement of agricultural research and extension project in three governorates in Upper Egypt. The loan is due to close in mid 2005 and 90% of project funds have been disbursed. APIP built on the experience of MADP and FADP but uses an innovative FSR approach. The project is judged to have achieved most of its main objectives, but sustainability does not appear likely for the same reasons encountered under MADP and FADP. Delays of implementation have also been experienced. APIP’s large rural credit component is working well with good outreach and high repayment rates, but the poorest, landless and women have been only partly reached. APIP credit is loaned at rates below the market rate of interest and BDACs’ costs, reducing the financial viability of the rural banks.
Like its predecessors in the Delta, the East Delta Newlands Agricultural Settlement Project (EDNASP) supports the settlement of low-income families on land being reclaimed in the East Delta. It finances construction of irrigation and social infrastructure as well as community development. Progress on the ground is far less than planned and five years after effectiveness disbursement has reached only 31%. Acute drainage problems became evident when implementation began and their repair required large expenditure by GOE unforeseen at appraisal, causing implementation delays. In 2002, like its predecessors in Lower Egypt, project credit funds were reallocated to civil works and equipment and the project completion date was extended to March 2005. Despite being the third newlands project, EDNASP was not designed in full coherence with IFAD’s prior experience and lessons learnt and the environmental challenges have not been fully addressed. Project management is mounting very commendable efforts to address these challenges, but because land reclamation in the Delta is a lengthy process, the evaluation believes that EDNASP is not likely to be completed by 2005 as planned.
SRDP is an innovative and ambitious project that resulted from a seven-year development process beginning with the GIM of 1994. The project aims to raise the capacity of rural communities to plan, implement, operate and maintain infrastructure projects across 1 500 villages in Sohag, a poor Upper Egypt Governorate. The project has a large rural credit component targeted at the rural poor, unemployed youth and women. But this innovative project is facing difficulties. More than three years into implementation, very little infrastructure has been completed, and disbursement has reached only 12.5%. Limited upfront investment has been made in promoting effective participatory approaches to sub-project planning and management. Participation is based on a representative approach, mostly through committees of elected officials, which does not fully allow for genuine community engagement. The project management unit (PMU) is small and despite the presence of a technical assistance team, the level of guidance and oversight provided is modest given the project’s scope. It is unlikely that SRDP can complete its activities by mid-2007 and more training and technical assistance is needed if SRDP is to develop a high level of local ownership.
The West Noubarya Rural Development Project (WNRDP) became effective in 2003 making it too recent to be evaluated. Cofinanced with the IDS, the project will improve livelihoods by providing support to community organizations, credit, technical services and marketing support building on three prior newlands projects. Using a participatory approach, the project will upgrade existing low-cost housing with financing from IDS and provide essential public services. Community participation is a strong thrust of the project. The project includes a credit component amounting to 41.1% of IFAD’s financing. But twelve months after project effectiveness the details of how this component will be implemented are still under negotiation.
Matruh II is a second phase of the WB-financed Matruh Resource Management Project. It is targeted to the small Bedouin communities in the northwest coastal zone and uses participatory management of watersheds that improves water harvesting and reduces natural resource degradation. It is co-financed by the WB and the GEF. While it does address important issues of environmental management in an isolated region, the project’s coherence with the COSOP priorities and its relevance to Egypt’s rural poverty profile appear limited. Before project effectiveness, GOE decided to scale back borrowing for Matruh II proposing to use only USD 4.0 million from the WB and USD 1.5 million from IFAD, reductions to be offset by increased commitments from GOE.
Efficiency was difficult to assess in all projects. Past evaluations of closed projects as well as project completion reports do not provide estimates of ex-post economic rate of return (ERR) given the lack of quantitative and reliable data. Among the closed projects, cost per household however was remarkably high for WBSP (compared to portfolio average) at USD 22 000 per household and an estimated ERR at appraisal of only 13% against an average of about 25% for the portfolio as a whole.
Programme impact12
Outreach. Since 1980, eight IFAD-supported projects have been designed to have a meaningful effect on a sizeable proportion of rural households and land holdings. While It is difficult to assess the exact achieved impact of these projects and their outreach, they are meant to influence in one way or another the lives of about 1.4 million households – equal to 12% of Egypt’s rural households – and 20% of the agricultural land. While these numbers are crude and there is some double counting, they are significant. IFAD has targeted well poor small farmers (those with less than five feddans in newlands and less than three feddans in oldlands), but it has not targeted the poorest people in rural areas. As recent poverty analysis demonstrates, Egypt’s rural poor are concentrated in Upper Egypt where IFAD has allocated less than half its loans. Only one project was approved for Southern Upper Egypt, where the poorest governorates are located. In the three governorates where IFAD supports agricultural production improvement in Northern Upper Egypt (Beni Suef, Fayoum and Minya) 55% of farmers are tenants, sharecroppers, or landless labourers. The landless alone account for 40% of the rural population working as agricultural labourers and engaging in livestock production. Despite their significant numbers, IFAD’s programme has not targeted directly these categories and efforts to develop livestock as a relevant focus for the poorest household and for women have been so far limited.
Access to Physical Assets. IFAD’s contribution to asset formation has been substantial. It is most direct in newlands projects through the provision of improved irrigation infrastructure, housing, drinking water systems, sanitation, electricity, and rural roads. The impact of the projects in this domain is impressive most notably in West Delta, where IFAD-supported projects have contributed to high levels of productivity and income increases and healthier communities. However, in some areas particularly in East Delta, problems with infrastructure and soil salinity still exist, and water quantity and quality issues are arising, which are threatening the continuation of this impact.
Agricultural Productivity and Food Security. Progress in GOE agricultural research and extension programmes have contributed to major improvements in crop and livestock productivity throughout Egypt over the last three decades. In project areas where IFAD has supported research and extension reliable data are not readily available to identify the extent to which improvements can be attributed to IFAD. But both the Minya and Noubaria governorates, where IFAD had two successive projects in each, achieved the highest increase in yields. IFAD contribution has clearly been positive and in most cases production increases have surpassed appraisal estimates indicating possibly higher than expected rates of return. CPE field work also highlighted positive increases in household income and food security in these governorates. But the value of these benefits has been at least partly offset by significant delays in implementation that would have lowered the discounted value of project benefits.
Access to Financial Assets. Except for one project (APIP), IFAD support for rural finance, despite its original large share in project components, has been ineffective and its impact on the target group has been modest. High levels of lending were proposed that were not achieved and the poverty groups targeted were not reached. Available data indicate that the reach of credit in IFAD projects overall has been well below the planned figures. Surveys conducted by BDACs and PMUs show that farmers with collateral used project credit most often. The poor, women and the landless usually lack collateral, hence access to credit. A good part of credit accessed has been used to finance consumption. The CPE concluded that rural financial services are the weakest area in the Egypt portfolio. One of the reasons is the absence of an appropriate rural financial system to service the poor.
Creating a sustainable rural finance system in Egypt is beyond the scope of IFAD alone but learning how to reach poor savers and borrowers through a low-cost, decentralized system is a relevant objective. IFAD-supported projects have not so far induced the PBDAC system to recognize the poor as creditworthy or to develop products that meet the needs of the poorest, women or the landless. The CPE found a number of reasons for this. First, rural banks have not been stakeholders in project design and credit conditions imposed ignore the banking principles the PBDAC system seeks to follow. Second, project credit terms tend to be fixed and are not changed or amended on review. Third, the cost of project-based funds – including the foreign exchange risk – is high and PBDAC can mobilize domestically all the loanable funds it needs from savings. IFAD should be encouraged in future to look for more effective ways of promoting rural finance based on the experience of microfinance programmes in Egypt and elsewhere.
Strengthening Human Assets. These include skills, education, health and nutritional status. In most projects, development of human assets has taken the form of training of GOE staff, project staff and beneficiaries to improve skills and raising capabilities and income. Most training has been directed at extension staff that acknowledge its value. However, training has been often used as a vehicle to provide incentives and many extension staff claim they are unable to put their training to work in the field for lack of field allowances and mobility. Under NASP, large numbers of women participated in the project’s training activities but these were focused on family health and nutrition, handicrafts and literacy, but not sufficiently on productive activities with marketing and income increasing potential. Women did not receive appropriate attention in extension services that were mostly directed to male farmers. Literacy training generated a lot of interest and has been useful in empowering young men and women. Improved health has also resulted from improved access to sanitation and access to safe water in the new settlements in lower Egypt. There has been no assessment of the impact of beneficiaries training programmes on livelihoods. Overall impact in this area was not high.
Social Capital and Empowerment. Building poor people collective capacity and empowering them through community organizations, promoting participation and gender equality, are recognized goals for IFAD. In Egypt, this has taken the form of support for community development associations and water user associations (WUAs). Over 400 WUAs have been established to date in IFAD projects involving 13 700 farmers under IFAD-supported projects and 56 000 feddans. This represents 18% of the irrigators in IFAD-supported projects although many of the earliest WUAs no longer exist. Water User Associations are now formally promoted as a GOE policy. While successful ones ensure better operations and management (O&M) and equity in water supply, can be empowered to negotiate with water authorities on water rights, and some empowered women farmers by making them part of their executives, their overall performance so far is mixed and the sustainability of many is in doubt. The impact of the only IFAD grant in support of WUAs is too early to assess.
While community participation and their empowerment have been given emphasis in the design of more recent IFAD financed projects, it has not been properly resourced or staffed. WNRDP is the only project in which community participation was allocated a substantial share of the budget. As a result, actual implementation of participation and its impact falls short of expectations. Furthermore, while the GOE aspires to a broader participation of the community, this would require much greater decentralization and autonomy at local levels than is currently accorded. The Egypt’s programme would benefit from the articulation of an approach to community participation that involves inclusive and detailed diagnostic analysis of community issues with full inclusion of communities involved.
While IFAD strategy and the more recent interventions recognize explicitly the role of rural women and their empowerment, no substantial impact can be so far recorded. This is partly due to limited access of rural women to credit, limited emphasis on support to livestock activities, and only recent focus on remunerative skill development for women. Some projects (EDNASP and WNRDP) support promising Community Development Associations (CDA) but these are still limited in scope to have a substantial impact on local empowerment.
Environment and Common Resources. Project documents contain little information on environmental impact. NASP and APIP promoted integrated pest management (IPM) that reduced the use of agrochemicals and reflected positively on human and animal health. EDNASP introduced a pilot IPM programme adopted by 10% of project farmers. Through promotion of sprinkler and drip irrigation, NASP and WNRDP have lowered water consumption and risk of groundwater salinization. EDNASP has developed the concept of the “clean and green village,” helping settlers plant trees and develop small parks, undertaken a survey of leaching on the land reclamation process, and is carrying out an environmental impact assessment and design work for two wastewater treatment plants. But environmental issues have not been addressed systematically and the interventions in these areas are too recent to have a visible impact.
Institutional Development and Policy Influence. A number of positive institutional development impacts have resulted from IFAD’s support to GOE. Among these is IFAD’s influence on the GOE decision to divest itself of its six remaining public sector agricultural companies operating in the area of Noubarya and to privatize them based on the experience of WBSP and IFAD’s support, and possibly influence, on the decentralization of extension services to governorate level. Other institutional development impact, e.g. in the area of markets and marketing, water management and others, is not evident. IFAD has agreed to provide institutional support to improve access by the poor to credit and saving services in two projects: SRDP and WNRDP. However, in neither case have these components been implemented: SRDP lacks still an institutional development plan and WNRDP has not developed a practical approach to credit provision. While the COSOP refers to rural credit as a recognized component of policy dialogue for IFAD in Egypt, IFAD has not participated formally in the national policy dialogue on rural finance. PBDAC and BDAC have not so far provided the institutional framework required to establish rural finance responsive to the needs of the poor. There is some evidence of successful small-scale rural finance operations in Egypt, including through NGOs and commercial banks.13 IFAD should be encouraged to look for more successful ways of promoting rural finance by assessing comprehensively the experience of relevant microfinance institutions and programmes and investigating options for collaboration with the objective of replication and scaling up.
Sustainability. The sustainability of impact of IFAD-supported investments depends on GOE’s capacity to provide policy support (such as for the link between agricultural research and extension and the viability of WUAs and CDAs), and its financial capacity to support project activities after project closing. Also important is the financial capacity of beneficiaries to pay O&M and user fees, and commercial interest rates on loans. Only some activities have become self-financing during project life and even where a user fee has been levied it is generally below the cost of supplying the service. Experience in West Delta suggests that GOE has provided most of these essentials and sustainability seems to be assured. This is not the case elsewhere. The ability of GOE to continue incentive payments to agricultural extension staff is an area of concern for the sustainability of projects’ impact. While some steps have been made toward self-financing and cost recovery, these are not sufficiently widespread. IFAD’s support for rural credit has had little sustainable impact on the availability of rural financial services to the poor. While an exit strategy or transition from a “project mode” of operations and financing to a “post-project mode” has been recommended in several IFAD-supported projects and implementation documents, few of them have developed such plans and many project-supported activities stopped when the projects closed. Enhancing the sustainability of project impacts has been helped in a few cases by the judicious use of grants, but overall unless actions are taken in the near future jointly by IFAD and GOE, the sustainability of many aspects of IFAD’s programme in Egypt is endangered. Overall the rural poverty impact of IFAD’s programme is judged by the evaluation, so far, as lying between modest and substantial.
Achievement of IFAD’s Strategic Objectives. Assessed against the twin objectives of its early identification missions, IFAD can be said to have largely achieved its strategic objectives. Assessed against the four main themes of its current strategy in NENA, or those cited in the 2000 Egypt COSOP, it would not score as highly.14 In addition, the 2000 COSOP identified four strategic areas of policy dialogue for IFAD in response to the changing framework conditions: (i) making rural finance more responsive to the needs of the poor; (ii) making the concept of participatory irrigation management operational; (iii) giving a more important role to the private sector in the development of agricultural marketing; and (iv) making extension services to the newlands sustainable through user fees and private sector mechanisms. The achievement of these objectives depends on an ability to engage closely with the GOE, the private sector and other actors in rural development. In practice, with the exception of WUA development there has been limited progress on these issues so far.
Partnerships: Involvement in Major Poverty Reduction Processes and Widening the Spectrum of Partnerships. The spectrum of partnership developed by IFAD in Egypt has not been wide enough: IFAD has worked with GOE largely alone. IFAD’s principal cofinancing partner has been the WB and more recently it has gathered support from IDS and GEF. As a result, IFAD is not well known among development partners as it should be, reducing opportunities for learning and influencing. The latter are particularly important since a PRSP is about to be prepared for Egypt. Under the PRSP process, IFAD needs to link with other donors to ensure that rural poverty reduction through agriculture and rural development contributes fully to achieving the MDGs. IFAD seeks to learn about development effectiveness and influence the actions of others and this requires engagement and shared responsibility. IFAD also should seek to leverage the resources of others and to do this, it must engage with potential partners through co-financing or by influencing directly what they do. Since IFAD’s loans come at a relative significant cost to Egypt, the Fund needs to ally itself with donors whose funding costs are lower in order to reduce the cost of a joint package. An example is found in the link to IDS where Italy’s support to Egypt is essentially a grant that complements IFAD loans in WNRDP.
At the national level, IFAD has developed a very strong partnership with the MALR at the expense of cultivating other promising partnerships with other agencies involved in agricultural and rural development and poverty reduction. This includes agencies like the Ministry of Local Development, Ministry of Irrigation and Water Development, the National Programme of Integrated Rural Development, and others. Direct partnerships with these agencies, in addition to widening the spectrum of IFAD’s engagement with actors on the rural poverty reduction scene, could have contributed to the facilitation of coordination among these agencies. The lack of coordination, at times, represented a constraint to effective project implementation. Nurturing partnerships directly with PBDAC could have led to more successful efforts towards the reorientation of this institution’s outlook to a pro-poor rural financial services policy. Finally, and most importantly, the need for partnership with NGOs and civil society and micro credit finance institutions has also been identified but opportunities to do this on the ground are few and have not been developed so far.
Policy Dialogue. While IFAD seeks explicitly to influence rural development policy and strategy it is not yet well placed to do so. Three factors contribute to this. First, IFAD has worked mainly in a project mode taking policy and strategy largely as a given. Second, IFAD’s professional resources have been focused on project development and – while they overlap – the skills needed to do sound policy analytical work are different from those needed to design and implement good projects. Third, the policy environment in Egypt is complex and to have a significant impact IFAD should sharpen its focus on a small number of areas and issues and periodically review them. Overall, IFAD must engage in the policy process, bringing professional resources to bear in forums where those who shape policy are present.
Using Grants in Support of Loan Objectives. Since 1994, Egypt has benefited from a share in 13 regional or multi-country grants (worth in total USD 10.3 million), and five country-specific grants worth USD 432 000. The latter have financed project implementation activities, participatory irrigation management and gender are highlighted in the CPE. While their impact is unknown, their relevance to current rural development priorities in Egypt is high. Given the obstacles to development in these areas, the judicious use of grants to finance well-chosen pilot actions is valuable. The potential to complement loans with grants to identify and demonstrate good practice before committing large volumes of resources should become a standard part of IFAD’s programme cycle.
Performance of Government. The performance of government has been overall good but with some caveats. Project experienced long effectiveness and implementation delays. Weak interagency coordination also affected project implementation. Credit components were designed by MALR without appropriate participation by PBDAC. With the possible exception of EDNASP where individual staff work hard to serve women effectively, attention to gender issues by most agencies is modest. There is a need to place gender equity more clearly and forcefully on the rural development agenda and provide more training and support. Also important, is the need for stronger support for the development of effective NGOs and civil society organizations to strengthen the environment needed to enhance participation and working with the poor.
Performance of Partners. IFAD’s key partners are the WB and UNOPS. IFAD’s relationship with the WB has been efficient in terms of resource mobilization, but not demonstrably effective. Effectiveness of partnership implies a degree of mutual influence and it is unclear if IFAD has influenced the WB to be more pro-poor. It is clear, however, that the WB is acting already on the changing poverty profile in Egypt and has recently initiated a poverty reduction strategy for Upper Egypt, before IFAD realizes its urgency. IFAD’s second key partner is UNOPS, the cooperating organization that supervises implementation of several IFAD-financed projects. UNOPS is a capable and experienced organization, but working through cooperating organizations separates IFAD from progress on the ground. IFAD participation in supervision missions increases its capacity to internalize knowledge and contribute to problem solving.
Project Identification, Preparation and Appraisal. Except for SRDP, most projects were identified, prepared and appraised quickly and efficiently, usually within a period of 18 months by experienced teams led by IFAD or the WB. Parts of some projects were not adequately prepared or appraised. Notably, several projects had infrastructure weaknesses that needed additional design work after they became effective. Technical design work should be improved if GOE and IFAD are to avoid expensive surprises downstream. The environmental and social consequences of wetland reclamation, particularly in EDNASP, were underestimated. The credit components of all projects have weaknesses stemming from the absence of PBDAC involvement and the absence of a coherent policy on rural financial services.
Project Implementation. There has been an average gap of 16 months between Board approval and loan effectiveness. These delays foreshadowed extended periods of implementation, with an average of over 11 years for the four closed projects. Delays in infrastructure components were common in early projects caused by delays in the procurement process. Key project components have not been implemented as planned (credit), or significantly scaled back (technical assistance). The latter influenced the performance of monitoring and evaluation (M&E). Some projects were redesigned very soon after they became effective suggesting technical weakness in project preparation or lack of ownership of an agreed design. All projects are implemented through PMUs where the capacity of the management teams has been uneven. Some PMUs have been strongly led and well managed, while others lacked project management experience and received limited management training. M&E has been weak across the portfolio. IFAD has managed its Egypt programme flexibly and this has enabled project costs to be spread over longer periods and most committed funds have been disbursed. However, in some cases such flexibility meant that delays in implementation continued and a sense of urgency for project completion has been lost.
Overall, the CPE concluded that weaknesses in some of the development processes employed by IFAD in Egypt (strategy formulation, partnerships, project identification, design weaknesses etc), plus limited responses from GOE (especially in terms of infrastructural and effectiveness delays, rural credit and M&E, but including inadequate project management arrangements in some instances) had resulted in lower achievements for the investment programme. These issues concern the management efficiency of the development partnership between IFAD and GOE. There is considerable scope to improve performance in this area, with consequent improvements in the programme impacts. This needs to be highlighted as an issue in future discussions, with clear commitments by both partners to improve performance. IFAD field presence would doubtless help in this respect.
Targeting Poverty. IFAD has approached targeting poverty in Egypt in two ways: (i) by targeting small farm households; and, (ii) by targeting special groups – including women-headed households, the landless, and unemployed youth. It succeeded in the first but not the second. More recently, IFAD has begun to target geographically with its support to SRDP and Matruh II, but these were self contained interventions and not positioned within a strategic thrust to locate interventions where the bulk of the rural poor live. In newlands, IFAD’s projects do not have explicit poverty targeting built in: all settlers are eligible for support. The CPE mission agrees that settler families – including graduates’ families – are poor and deserve IFAD’s support.
Decentralization and Growth of Civil Society. IFAD’s portfolio has evolved as the GOE has decentralized and devolved authority for development activities to the governorate level. This has enhanced the relevance of IFAD’s programme by increasing its application to local needs and aspirations. However, the process has not gone as fast as expected and the activities and scope of civil societies are still evolving. As a result, the space for community-driven development has not expanded as originally perceived. Effective development NGOs exist in Egypt but their numbers and capacity are limited.
Promoting Replicable Innovations. Since 1995 IFAD has sought to promote innovation in development, however this is not yet a hallmark of its programme in Egypt. Opportunities to extend innovation based on experience exist in the work on FSR in APIP backed by strong and relevant inputs from upstream research and in the development of WUAs and water unions in newlands. However, it will require a careful analytic approach to understand the management and implementation of these development activities – and probably the use of grants – to diagnose what to innovate, when, where and how. The approach adopted in the Sohag project, pending positive outcome, offers also opportunities for replication.
Developing Management Skills for Participatory Projects. Egypt is a sophisticated borrower where many people have high levels of formal education to the tertiary level. However, Egypt has a limited cadre of proven managers particularly for participatory development processes and projects. There are elements of technical assistance in most IFAD-supported projects and in some cases explicit support for training, but it is not possible to identify how much of IFAD’s support has promoted human resource development in this area. Hardware skills that have been developed over the years in Egypt’s agriculture services agencies and in IFAD’s supported projects are not matched by the software or people skills needed successfully to implement participatory projects in disadvantaged communities. Other project management skills, such as the design and implementation of M&E systems, continue to demand attention.
Promoting Sustainability. Sustainability refers to the likelihood that the achievements of IFAD’s investments will be maintained over time. More attention should be given by IFAD and GOE to this aspect. In agricultural research and extension the search for an affordable and cost-effective system is not yet over and sustainability of the system developed under APIP is not guaranteed. In irrigation and water management sustainability is a concern for both infrastructure and management systems. O&M is an issue and IFAD must continue to support the growth of a maintenance culture within government and beneficiaries.
Sustainability of community based rural infrastructure works put in place under SRDP may be limited because of the level and approach of participation used. GOE and IFAD should re-examine these approaches under SRDP to ensure sustainability.
Strategic
Have a Presence in Cairo. IFAD has agreed to place staff in Cairo on an experimental basis for three years. The CPE recommends that IFAD place a senior local professional in Egypt able to deal effectively with counterparts in the GOE and potential partners. She/he should have a strong professional background able to articulate effectively issues of sectoral policy, rural development and poverty issues as well as project implementation. She/he should participate in GOE and donor forums that plan, monitor and evaluate donor assistance to the rural sector and occasionally participate in project supervision missions. An issue that has to be discussed with GOE, however, is the future willingness of Egypt to borrow from IFAD at intermediate terms. This is crucial if IFAD is to invest in a pilot field presence initiative in Egypt, as seems to be the case. A major task of such a placement should be to aim at improving the management efficiency of the development processes relating to IFAD’s programme in Egypt. This concerns not only the processes that are driven by IFAD, such as the COSOP, but also insisting on higher levels of efficiency being achieved by IFAD’s development partners in managing their joint programme. IFAD should support moves to improve management efficiency with funding, where appropriate.
Shift the Regional Focus of IFAD’s Strategy. The lens to focus IFAD’s future strategy and programme should be the changing profile of rural poverty. IFAD should shift its strategic focus towards the rural areas of the poor governorates in Southern Upper Egypt. IFAD should target the poorest rural communities and address the needs of landless, men and women for employment and income equitably. No new commitments should be made to the West Delta, but IFAD should share its experience in new settlement with all partners. A medium-term exit strategy is needed for East Delta after critical technical and social infrastructure gaps are closed.
Update the COSOP. The CPE found that there is a need to formulate a new COSOP to take account of the fast-changing circumstances in the rural economy of Egypt and the economic policy at large. The strategy needs to be more closely aligned to GOE’s priorities and better focused to give specific guidance to project designers. During this process IFAD should take full account of the potential for widening partnerships with other funding agencies (see below - Work through Partnership). Suggestions for elements that should be considered in the new strategy can be found in Appendix VII.
Invest More in Social Development and Sequence Programme Interventions. IFAD’s investment so far has given stronger emphasis on the hardware needed for poverty reduction, e.g., agriculture services, irrigation and rural infrastructure and credit. Emphasis on local level institutional strengthening and community development have received less attention overall (i.e., building social capital). There is a need to develop a programmatic approach regarding IFAD’s support in these two main areas. Experience indicated that local level institutional strengthening is often a precondition for agricultural investment and rural infrastructure. There is a need to sequence interventions in future IFAD programmes such that local level institutional support, training in participatory approaches and community development precede infrastructure and agriculture development. The appropriate mix of instruments (lending and non-lending) should be used to achieve the appropriate sequencing and balance. The judicious use of grants to catalyze key activities and processes should be expanded.
Revise the Approach to Rural Finance. IFAD’s rural credit intervention is the weakest aspect of its programme in Egypt. In cooperation with GOE and other development partners, IFAD should carefully re-evaluate this experience before making any new commitments to rural finance. The future strategy should strengthen appropriate financial institutions and deepen financial services. Two strategic options are recommended: strengthen the village banking network and extend its reach to poorer clients; and promote community-based micro finance institutions (outside the PBDAC system) owned and managed by their members. IFAD should also seek regional partnerships in the area of rural financial services, particularly to increase its knowledge of ongoing initiatives in this sub-sector and identify appropriate entry points.
Work Through Partnership and Engage in Policy Dialogue. IFAD must work less in isolation and more in partnership with like-minded others. Partnerships should be sought on the basis of shared goals and practical synergies, where the strengths of partners are complementary both in knowledge and modalities of finance (grants versus loans). Partnership with NGOs and civil society organizations, financed by grants, should increase proximity to the target groups. IFAD seeks to be a privileged dialogue partner of GOE and key donors. To achieve this, it has to equip itself with relevant knowledge and experience, be present in the appropriate forums, employ its links to leaders and policy makers, and engage on the development scene. There are many areas of potential engagement and IFAD has to choose carefully and selectively – in consultation with partners – where it can use its knowledge and limited resources to influence policies towards the rural poor. The precursor to developing such partnerships is to clearly identify IFAD’s “niche”, so that the value-added by cooperating with the Fund can be demonstrated. The logical time to seek new partners is during the process of formulating the new country strategy, when the “fit” with the development objectives of potential partners can be assessed.
Become a Leader for Rural Poverty Reduction. In the PSRSP process that is about to start there is a danger for agriculture and the rural sector to get sidelined as the number of priority issues grows. When IFAD has a presence on the ground in Cairo it should take a lead to ensure that this does not happen in Egypt when poverty is a rural phenomenon.
Strengthen the Sectoral Knowledge Base. IFAD needs to strengthen its sectoral knowledge base. This can be done through closer associations with Egyptian universities and research organizations, and other relevant multilaterals and bilaterals. IFAD should expand its in-house policy analysis resources for NENA and develop further its links to sources of sound policy analysis for poverty reduction. This will help the Fund to make the transition from a project-based, financing organization to a programme-based, innovative knowledge organization. IFAD work is also little known in the wide development circles in Egypt. To be a valuable and influential partner IFAD must share its knowledge in rural poverty alleviation through contributing to relevant fora and organizing its own.
Strengthen Gender Emphasis. IFAD’s support for improved gender equity has produced limited results relative to both the claims and the needs. Culturally and politically, the environment for gender equality, despite recent improvement, still needs further strengthening. In this context, IFAD has to become more strategic in the choices that it makes on gender, more openly committed to promoting gender equity, and prepared to drop its support for activities that maintain the status quo. In Southern Upper Egypt, IFAD needs to focus more on women as farmers by drawing them fully into research, extension and micro-credit activities, and assess the scope for on and off farm income and employment for women. IFAD should use its grant mechanism more forcefully to raise the profile of gender issues with its development partners throughout its programme.
Operational
Work Faster and Improve Project Readiness. IFAD has committed about USD 189.9 million to nine projects in Egypt over 25 years. While IFAD’s seeks to be both a dependable partner and innovative, working at this slow pace and on this large scale per project makes for slow progress. Delays in project implementation and readiness to extend closing dates repeatedly exacerbated the problem. The Fund should consider developing a portfolio with a larger number of smaller more focused and innovative projects that are implemented faster, evaluated, then scaled up/replicated. By expanding its work with grants based donors, IFAD could leverage its resources and work faster. IFAD has appraised and approved projects with components that were unprepared for implementation. No safeguards were installed to find feasible alternatives. It often took the Government long time to declare projects effective. Both parties must ensure that projects are well prepared and implemented timely. When infrastructure is involved, the quality of detailed design work has to be raised using adequate preparation funds to ensure that there are no costly surprises after projects are approved.
Promote Innovative Approaches, their Replication and Scaling Up. Project design and implementation processes should be realigned to the needs of promoting innovative approaches, and the appropriate mix of instruments (loans versus grants) should be used to this effect. Successful innovative approaches in IFAD’s current programme should be supported and replicated. The gains made through FSR under APIP are a good example. These results should be carefully documented and assessed for wider application. Support for FSR should be continued but focused on Upper Egypt needs with additional contributions from farm economics and social science. The investment needs of the upstream research system that would provide the basic building blocks of applied research in the poor governorates of Upper Egypt should also be assessed and supported if appropriate.
Reassess Supervision Approaches. To implement innovative projects and pilot actions, or to scale-up successes, IFAD needs to get closer to the action on the ground, get more out of project supervision, and improve supervision capacity for implementation support. Particularly in IFIs supervision, maintaining fiduciary responsibility is more emphasized at the expense of problem solving. IFAD should re-evaluate its approach to project supervision and be prepared to devote more of its own resources to strengthen the process. IFAD should review the type of results it wants from supervision in Egypt and no longer accept weak performance in M&E.
Assess Scope for Off-farm Income and Employment for Landless. The need to understand how to accelerate off-farm income and employment in rural areas is appreciated but not analyzed and answered. IFAD should consider investing in knowledge (through its grant programme) of how to support effectively the generations of off-farm employment for landless and women and incorporate results into its loan programme.
Re-orient SRDP. SRDP is an innovative rural infrastructure project that is relevant and geographically well targeted. Creatively managed, this project could influence the SHROUK Programme and the Social Fund for Development (SFD). However, SRDP’s overall performance is modest and it risks becoming simply a supplementary funding source for much larger programmes. SRDP should be reviewed to make it a more effective catalyst for change. In addition, SRDP is trying to implement a big budget project with a small-project team and this needs to be reviewed and strengthened. Other challenges include the availability of counterpart funding and the limitations under the previous designs of the credit/ loan agreements.
76. Communicate Better. IFAD’s work is neither widely known nor fully appreciated in Egypt outside the offices of its closest collaborators. Awareness of IFAD’s work should be raised through greater participation in development forums in-country and more attention to brief communication products that are widely shared with clients and partners.
1/ Before declaring it effective, the Government of Egypt has proposed cancellation of a substantial portion of the credit for the Second Matruh Natural Resource Management Project. More recently (December 2004), the loan was cancelled for both IFAD and the World Bank.
2/Towards a Methodological Framework for Country Programme Evaluations, Office of Evaluation (OE), January 2004; and the Methodological Framework for Project Evaluations, OE September 2003, (EC 2003/34/W.P.3).
3/ The Evaluation Team was comprised of Dr Christopher Gibbs, Mission Leader and Policy and Institutional Expert; Ms Maliha Hussein, Rural Sociologist; Mr Hans Dieter Seibel, Rural Financial Service Expert; Mr Parvis Hekmat, Irrigation and Rural Infrastructure Specialist; Mr Hikmat Nasr, Agronomist Extension and Research Specialist; Ms Manal Mohamed Eid and Ms Hanan Hamdy Abdel Rehim Radwan, National Sociologists; and Mr Sayed Hussein Mohamed, Mission Facilitator. Dr Mona Bishay, former Deputy Director of the Office of Evaluation, designed and supervised the evaluation process throughout. The evaluation benefited from a peer review by Dr Samir Radwan, Managing Director of the Economic Research Forum for Arab Countries Iran and Turkey. The finalization of the evaluation was supervised by Mr Fabrizio Felloni, Evaluation Officer (OE) with contributions by Mr Frank Butcher, consultant.
4/ See Egypt Human Development Report, 2003.
5/ Enabling the Rural Poor to Overcome their Poverty. Strategic Framework for IFAD 2002-2006.
6/ Regional Strategy Paper. Near East and North Africa. Programme Management Department, IFAD, March 2002.
7/ KfW provided supported to infrastructure development in the FADP area through a separate financing arrangement but this was not seen as part of the IFAD-supported project and not addressed in the Interim Evaluation of that project.
8/ West Beheira Settlement Project (WBSP); Newlands Agricultural Settlement Project (NASP); East Delta Newlands Agricultural Settlement Project (EDNASP); West Noubarya Rural Development Project (WNRDP).
9/ Minya Agricultural Development Project (MADP); Fayoum Agricultural Development Project (FADP); Agricultural Production Intensification Project (APIP).
10/ GOE indicated in May 2004 that it would like IFAD to reduce its commitment to Matruh II from USD 12.7 million to USD 1.5 million. More recently (December 2004), the loan was cancelled for both IFAD and the World Bank.
11/ As per IFAD’s MFE, programme performance is judged on the basis of three criteria: relevance, effectiveness and efficiency.
12/ Impact criteria used by the evaluation are consistent with IFAD’s Methodological Framework for Project Evaluation (EC 2003/34/W.P.3).
13/ The Ford Foundation supported a successful programme between 1988 and 1991 reported by the Community Economics Corporation in Lending and Learning: Formal Banks and Microenterprise in Egypt (1993). Much of the microcredit provided in Egypt in the 1990s came via NGOs which served some 75 000 borrowers and had USD 55.0 million outstanding in loans. While much of this activity is urban, there are interesting microfinance activities supported by the National Bank for Development and the Banque du Caire, and a small Grameen Bank replication programme in Cairo.
14/ These themes include for the NENA strategy empowering the poor, diversifying rural income, reducing gender inequalities, and improving natural resource management – where water scarcity is the most critical and urgent issue. The Egypt’s 2000 COSOP proposes a strategic niche for IFAD with four parts: improving and expanding newlands settlement; expanding the off-farm impacts of smallholder farm development; making marketing more efficient – especially of dairy and horticultural products – to improve farm prices and incomes; and, expanding rural SMEs through provision of training and improved access to credit.