Alaa Farouk, Egypt's Minister of Agriculture and Land Reclamation, met with a delegation from the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) on Monday to discuss potential avenues for collaboration. The meeting, held in Cairo, took place during the ECA's participation in a continental workshop focused on verifying guidelines to enhance women's land tenure security across Africa. During the meeting, Minister Farouk highlighted key government strategies, programmes, and initiatives aimed at driving agricultural transformation and empowering women. He emphasized Egypt's readiness to collaborate with other African nations to strengthen agricultural value chains, thereby boosting added value and contributing to socio-economic transformation across the continent. One prominent initiative discussed was Egypt's "Decent Life" programme, which is improving over 300 agricultural complexes across 20 governorates. Farouk explained that the initiative's success could provide valuable insights for other African countries in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly in health, education, gender equality, infrastructure, and manufacturing. He urged the ECA to work with other UN agencies to scale up successful initiatives like "Decent Life" to accelerate progress toward the SDGs and the African Union's Agenda 2063. Joan Kagwanja, Chief of the Agribusiness Enabling Environment Section (ABEES) at ECA and Coordinator for the African Land Policy Center (ALPC), acknowledged Egypt's significant contribution to developing the African land policy framework, ratified at the 2009 African Union Summit. The ECA delegation also included Medhat El-Helepi, who leads the ECA's efforts to strengthen member states' capacity to develop climate-resilient food systems, regional agricultural value chains, and agricultural parks.
