The conclave brought together ministers of finance and planning from the 78 HCP countries to share experiences and push action on: mobilizing and safeguarding resources to protect and invest in people amid the pandemic, and adopting innovative solutions for better and more equitable human capital outcomes. President of the World Bank Group, David Malpass, opened the session and praised the efforts made by Egypt in the health sector to combat the COVID-19 pandemic, noting that the Egyptian state has allocated 100 billion pounds to strengthen the health sector and finance a comprehensive economic recovery plan to offset the repercussions that will result from the precautionary measures taken. INVESTMENT IN HUMAN CAPITAL: 3 APPROACHES In her speech, Dr. Rania Al Mashat stated that Egypt has made investment in human capital as a top priority, as evidenced by its three-pronged approache: increase in allocation for health and social spending, ensure continued provision of critical social protection, and undertaking a review of social spending to assess efficiency and look for areas of improvement. She noted that allocations for health spending have increased significantly since the onset of the pandemic, and that 60,000 households were added to Takaful and Karama Program as well as an additional 100,000 will be added due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Since its launch in 2015 with the support of the World Bank program, the minister noted that the program has covered over 2.26 million households which amounts to approximately 9.4 million individuals, or approximately 10% of Egypt’s population. Al Mashat added that the government has identified 1.5 million informal workers to receive cash transfers to mitigate the economic effects of the crisis, which is currently ongoing and is being regulated by the government. To improve quality and access to education, the World Bank launched a five-year Supporting Egypt Education Reform project worth USD 500 million loan in 2018 to provide 1.5 million students and teachers with digital learning facilities. The minister asserted that the participation of women in Egypt is regarded as macro-critical, which is why the Ministry of International Cooperation, the National Council for Women, and the World Economic Forum, launched the “Closing the Gender Gap Accelerator”, a national public-private collaboration model which enables governments and businesses to take decisive action on closing economic gender gaps and increase women’s participation in the private sector. Al Mashat noted that approaching investment in human capital be achieved through integrating gender equality in all projects, such as the Sun Drying Tomato Unit project in Baghdadi village in Luxor, which will invest in women’s role in agriculture by only employing women and provide 200 seasonal job opportunities. The minister affirmed that the role of the ministry of international cooperation is to strengthen economic diplomacy through three principles: regularly organizing multi-stakeholder platforms to ensure that all projects between development partners are streamlined and effectively coordinated; adopting a consistent Global Partnerships Narrative People&Projects&Purpose (P&P&P); and mapping ODA financing to SDGs for all projects with multilateral and bilateral development partners.