Agriculture

The Future Breadbasket

Food is powerful. It builds peace, promotes stability and brings opportunity.

David Beasley, Executive Director of World Food Programme

From Farm to Table: The Behind the Scenes

Africa is the world's future breadbasket, and Egypt is the gateway to Africa. We envision Egypt’s future through the empowerment of local farmers, with all stakeholders coming together to achieve a paradigm shift in the agriculture sector. In Egypt’s economy, agriculture contributes to 14.5% of the country’s GDP, and accounts for 28% of all jobs as well as over 55% of employment in Upper Egypt. According to the Food Agriculture Organization, the agriculture sector witnessed a 20% increase in export revenue in 2019. The good news this year as well is that Egypt’s food exports were not severely affected by the pandemic, with the country being one of the few countries in the region that continued to provide supply despite the challenging circumstances.

Transforming Communities

Food security goes beyond putting an end to hunger - it’s about empowering farmers and their communities. Our goal is to push for farmer-led sustainable agriculture so that the interests of the small farmers are put at the front to unleash their potential and productivity.

People at the Core

Our strategy starts by putting small scale farmers and communities at the core. We aim to achieve this through many different ways, mainly by building their capacity and improving their access to the right inputs, knowledge, finance, and markets in order to have links with the right customers.


Digitalization has also been pushed forward to empower farmers and help them receive constant information on food safety standards to increase exports of fresh products to Europe and the MENA region.

Projects in Action

Currently, there are 13 agricultural projects worth a total of $545.42m being implemented across 27 governorates, which reach 1.5 million women and men and provide 15,000 job opportunities.

Dealing with the consequences of the Russian-Ukrainian crisis and the repercussions of the COVID-19

In light of the government’s efforts and priorities, the Ministry of International Cooperation has intensified its discussions with development partners to enhance food security over the past four years. Soft development financing agreements and non-refundable development grants have been concluded with multilateral and bilateral partners worth $3.34 billion in the field of agriculture, food security, supply and irrigation. Among the most prominent partners are the French Development Agency (AFD), the United States of America, the International Fund for Agricultural Development, the OPEC Fund for International Development, the European Union, the European Investment Bank, the Islamic Development Bank, and others.

The most prominent development cooperation projects in the field of food security