Egypt's President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi inspected on Wednesday morning the equipment, vehicles, and engineering machinery of the various state authorities participating in the 'Decent Life' initiative to develop the villages of the Egyptian countryside, a statement by the presidency said. The initiative aims to improve the standards of living, infrastructure, and basic services, and targets 58 percent of Egypt's 102-million population. The Decent Life initiative dates back to 2019 when the president charged the Ministry of Social Solidarity with developing Egypt's poorest 1,000 villages. Then former minister of social solidarity Ghada Wali said the project would "target the most underprivileged sectors and individuals in the most impoverished and remote areas." Of the 1,000 villages, 143 across 11 governorates were chosen for the trial phase, which include an estimated 4.5 million citizens, with the development costs estimated at EGP 4 billion. The trial phase is now 96 percent complete. In December 2020, El-Sisi decided to expand the initiative to include 4,500 villages within the framework of the Sustainable Development Strategy: Egypt's Vision 2030. "The Egyptian countryside will be transformed in three years' time," El-Sisi said in January while launching the expanded initiative. The entire national project's budget has been increased to EGP 700 billion, according to the initiative's officials. The enormous volume of work required to develop the 4,500 villages means they have been divided into three groups of 1,500 villages each. The work of developing the initiative's first 1500-village group started in January 2021 with a budget of EGP 250 billion and is due to be completed by the end of FY 2021-22.
