Village development project

Village development project

The Egyptian government is fast tracking a national project that has been too long in the coming, something to which the decline in the rural development indicators testify. This has been due to decades of neglect of the development needs of the Egyptian village. The National Programme for the Development of Egyptian Villages aims to improve the quality of life for all of the country's 4,741 villages, promising each its rightful share of infrastructural development, public services and income-generating economic projects that will create job opportunities for their inhabitants.

President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi launched this programme in 2019, in the framework of the Decent Life Initiative, in order to change the face of rural Egypt and raise the standards of living of the 58 million Egyptians who live in the countryside. Over LE 500 billion has been allocated to the programme. In the light of rural to urban migration rates of up to 55 per cent, the government hopes the village development programme will significantly reduce these rates.

According to a recent statement by Prime Minister Mustafa Madbouli, the first stage of the programme targets 143 rural communities in 11 governorates in the 2019-2020 fiscal year and 232 more rural