Battling with the hydra

Why, despite a plethora of poverty-reduction programmes, dollops of aid and donors galore, are so many Egyptians poor? In an exclusive interview, UNDP Resident Representative Antonio Vigilante talks to Gihan Shahine about the challenges of reducing poverty
At the donors' conference recently held in Sharm El-Sheikh, there was a consensus that social development, with a special focus on poverty reduction, must be a priority for the government of Egypt and the donor community. The Donor Assistance Group (DAG) stressed that "groups living at the social margins, facing great difficulties in accessing basic services such as health-care and education" must be "the subject of specific targeted policies to overcome the risk of vulnerability."
Poverty affects children and old people worst: they are at greater risk of death or ill-health than their wealthier peers, often because of unsafe housing, malnutrition, low birth weight, chronic illness, lack of medical care and stress. Vulnerable and disadvantaged groups often have inadequate shelter, lack basic services such as safe drinking water and sanitation, a clean environment protected from solid and toxic waste, and access to electricity.
But are more funds the answer to Egypt's poverty problem?
Egypt already receives substantial assistance from abroad: there are over 40 donors working in the field of poverty. The UN system alone provides $40 million annually, more than half of which is channelled to anti-poverty programmes, alongside the funds the UN raises from other donors. The government of Egypt has always declared low-income groups a "top priority," providing services through the Ministry of Insurance and Social Affairs (MISA) and the Ministry of Al- Awqaf (religious endowments). And there are 14,000 non-governmental organisations (NGOs) registered in MISA, of which 74 explicitly provide welfare.
But despite these efforts, poverty in Egypt is still rampant. Many experts insist that the numbers of poor are growing. But is this the result of inadequate resources or just of poor planning and targeting of resources?
A host of methodological, conceptual and practical difficulties faces those who seek an answer. Measuring poverty is an inexact science at best; at worst, it is riddled with controversy arising from different ideological views of who the poor are. Even when using the same data, different researchers give varying estimates about how many poor Egypt has.
Al-Ahram Weekly looked for answers from an organisation whose avowed mission is to support anti-poverty initiatives in the country: the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
Antonio Vigilante, UNDP resident representative and UN resident coordinator, is keen to look at poverty afresh. "Our concept of poverty goes beyond income," he told the Weekly. Accepted international norms class the poor as those living on less than a dollar a day. But according to Vigilante this criterion "does not befit" Egypt.
"Egypt's latest Human Development Report (EHDR) shows that income poverty is only part of the picture," Vigilante explained. "Rather, we follow a broader measure of human poverty which takes into consideration income and non-income dimensions: [the latter include] malnutrition, higher incidence of child mortality and morbidity, adult illiteracy rate, the percentage of individuals with no access to health services or potable water and the percentage of children who are severely underweight."
Since 1996, the EHDR has approached poverty by using a variation on the traditional approach, measuring how much it costs the poor to meet essential needs. The "food poverty" line (deemed to reflect "ultra-poverty") charts the cost of essential food subsistence. The "lower-poverty" line charts the cost of both food and non-food essentials. This escapes the dollar-a-day measure of poverty, and brings measurements in line with the cost of living in a given country, though the classification is still based on purchasing ability, not the broader measures of "human poverty" outlined above.
"Calculating from the lower poverty line, we find that the numbers of poor has decreased from 25 per cent of the population in 1990 to 20 per cent in 1999/2000," Vigilante said. Still, that is almost 12 million people who are currently unable to satisfy their basic food and non-food needs.
The international target is to reduce the numbers of poor by half by the year 2015. But even if that reduction is achieved, and according to the EHDR's measure, at least 10 million people will remain poor, at current population levels.
"That is, of course, a big number, but Egypt should have more ambitious targets beyond the international one," Vigilante argued. "If we take human poverty as our measurement, I'm sure the number of poor is even higher than 20 per cent. Egypt should, therefore, accelerate its efforts to reduce the number of the poor as much as possible."
Still, Vigilante urges focusing efforts first. "You have to start with those who are in the worst condition, and then widen your focus to include more ambitious targets. Otherwise, the country will risk dispersing its efforts."
Vigilante is not only worried by the absolute numbers of poor; he is also concerned at poverty's unequal grip on the country. Poverty is worst in Upper Egypt. "That is why the government has been putting lots of emphasis on investing heavily in Upper Egypt over the past few years," Vigilante observed. The UNDP, together with the Ministry of National Planning, is also studying a new mechanism that will allow poverty to be calculated by district, to help focus poverty reduction plans.
"Of course, we all want a world without poverty, which is possible," Vigilante remarked. "It may require two or three generations, but it can be achieved. It is a question of political will at the national and international levels."
Vigilante proposes job creation as his main remedy. Most of the poor are unemployed, although as the number of poor outstrips the number of jobless, the "working poor" still exist. The poor that are in work, tend to be illiterate and unskilled, so they usually work in unstable, low-paid jobs, under harsh conditions, and with low productivity.
"The government should not only tackle unemployment, but also underemployment through a long-term plan to empower people and give them access to better, higher-paid jobs through micro-credit and small business support," Vigilante argues.
UNDP, for its part, is working to design a national employment programme. "UNDP, in cooperation with the Social Fund, is currently studying the feasibility of establishing two business- support centres in Minya and Beni Sueif, as pilot programmes for providing advice and training to those launching small businesses. If the models prove successful and self-sufficient, another hundred will be established nationwide," said Vigilante.
Another area of focus is education. "The high illiteracy rate heightens human poverty in the country," argues Vigilante. "The world is becoming more and more competitive. For Egypt to compete, it has to give priority attention to schools. You should give more attention to the quality of teaching and curricula, make sure the syllabus is relevant to life and allow students to develop a critical mind oriented towards perpetual self- education. Without providing schools with good infrastructure and access to information technology, and if school drop-out and illiteracy rates remain high, I'm afraid Egypt will not be able to survive the competition and accelerate its pace of development," Vigilante warned.
The link between education and human suffering is clear. "Educated women suffer less from sickness and their families tend to enjoy better health," Vigilante said. "Again, educated women tend to have fewer children and better access to jobs. All donors tend to agree that education is the real accelerator of development."
Education, however, is no magic remedy. Better education may reduce poverty, but poverty also stops many receiving a proper education. Failings in the education system, and the need to earn, drive many children out of classrooms and into work. Further pushing children out of school is the cost of education. In Egypt, tuition is free, but the cost of classroom materials and other expenses mounts up. Education reform cannot work properly while poverty is still a main cause of child labour and missed class time.
So how can the country overcome the challenge?
Vigilante concedes the point: "Income, no doubt, is a constraint on education, but education is a main enabler of poverty alleviation. To break the cycle you have to define priorities. You cannot delay putting efforts into education because families cannot sacrifice the income their children bring from work."
Rather, Vigilante suggests, the costs associated with education should be reduced to encourage families to educate their children, and the school system should be made flexible to allow children to help their families farm without dropping out of school. The long-term objective, however, should be to eliminate child labour altogether.
"Awareness is key," Vigilante maintains. "A family that is not informed about what education can do for its children will not accept fewer arms working in the fields."
To help meet the challenge, UNDP will soon launch an awareness campaign. The campaign aims to educate people on several issues such as literacy, agriculture, drug abuse, solid waste disposal, garbage management and other environmental issues.
"Innovation is also important in breaking the poverty cycle," Vigilante commented. In this respect, UNDP is also providing an example. The computer-based system for literacy the UNDP is launching with the Ministry of Information Technology (MIT) is a case in point.
"The initiative aims to teach the illiterate how to read and write directly on a computer," Vigilante explained. "This innovative idea will provide the illiterate with better access to CD literacy programmes, and later, hopefully, to jobs. It is a new challenge for which we are just providing an example. If it works, the private sector will have to take over."
Such innovative initiatives, Vigilante quickly added, could help the country attain its national target of eradicating illiteracy within five years.
"To meet that target, the country must develop more aggressive programmes and give them a high priority," Vigilante asserted. The rate of illiteracy is still as high as 40 per cent of the population. "There are many literacy programmes, but they are not progressing fast. Egypt should revise those programmes and develop new approaches and reach-out campaigns."
Nor, argues Vigilante, should women be forgotten: they constitute 70 per cent of the poor and the majority of the illiterate in Egypt. In many rural and remote areas, women do not even have an ID card and, accordingly, limited access to economic life and services.
"You cannot accelerate human development when half of the population is left behind," Vigilante contends. "There is an urgent need to close the gender gap if poverty is to be alleviated."
The UN agencies are, therefore, supporting the formulation of an action plan for girls' education with the National Council for Childhood and Motherhood. They aim to bridge the literacy gender gap within five years.
"Our goal is to help girls reach the same levels of school enrolment as boys; help women acquire ID cards and birth certificates; and encourage their participation in economic, social and political life. It is a gradual process that needs awareness and affirmative action," Vigilante maintained.
Helping UNDP initiatives be taken seriously, Vigilante thinks, is the perception that UNDP is impartial. "Financially, we have limited funds as UNDP, but morally we are big because we are impartial; we don't represent any interest. We support the country's policy-makers without prejudice, adapting policies and bringing advice. We have made tremendous achievements in building the country's institutional capacity -- a cornerstone of sustainable development."
But surely it is high time Egypt was self- sufficient? Many experts argue that most aid programmes are not sustainable and that a huge part of external funding has been wasted on bringing expensive foreign expertise to Egypt and on purchasing unneeded goods.
"Egypt is rich in its own resources and has the capacity for development, but it still needs external support to accelerate the pace of its development," Vigilante replied. Vigilante accepts that "some donors are bureaucratic and slow," or may insist on having expertise or equipment being sourced from their own country. "But all in all, I believe external assistance is not wasted and foreign expertise is sometimes essential," he added. "Assistance, however, can be optimised if the government prioritises and coordinates the assistance a country receives, and makes sure donors' projects are sustainable."
Development, at any rate, is a slow process. "If we look at the past 20 years, we will find that Egypt has made tremendous headway, but that population growth is not allowing it to enjoy all the benefits," he maintains.
Many other obstacles persist. "Sometimes the political will is there, the policies are good and the funds are available, but it is usually a problem of implementation," Vigilante laments. "Good coordination and management are fundamental for better use of financial assistance; and they are certainly lacking. Nor is communication always smooth between different institutions and a mechanism is needed to coordinate efforts."
Egypt has no explicit policy for addressing poverty at a national level. Nor is there an official body responsible for designing, implementing and monitoring poverty reduction programmes, according to a recent ILO study.
The study argues that NGOs are unable to take a major role in poverty alleviation. Donors, as well as other institutions, follow their own anti-poverty agendas and, more often than not, their programmes overlap, wasting efforts and funds. There is significant lack of coordination between the government, donors and NGOs. "This has resulted in a situation where different programmes actually compete with each other, thus minimising the potential impact of their efforts," the study concluded.
"The problem is that all the elements for eliminating poverty are there, but we need a framework, an integrated strategy, and a plan of action that defines priorities, sets targets and ultimately brings resources to them," Vigilante argues.
At the Sharm El-Sheikh conference, donors recommended that Egypt prepare a comprehensive medium-term action plan within 18 months. The plan should include poverty reduction targets, benchmarks, coordination and monitoring instruments and emphasise social as well as economic impact.
"Once there are good plans, Egypt will find even more donors," Vigilante stressed. Resources are never a constraint, he concluded; inconsistent planning, however, is.
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