While there are numerous geographically based developmental gaps1 within Egypt&mdash;urban vs. rural, planned vs. informal areas&mdash;the divide between rural Upper Egypt and the rest of the country is the deepest and most profound. Today 51.94% of the population in Egypt&rsquo;s rural Upper Egypt cannot meet their basic needs, both food and non-food related (CAPMAS, 2018). The gap in development is exacerbated by other variables not related to place, such as gender, age, and wealth, meaning the disparity is multidimensional and more compounded.
According to the Household Income and Expenditure Survey, poverty in rural Upper Egypt declined from 56.7% in 2015 to 51.94% in 2018 (CAPMAS, 2018). Even so, this region remains the poorest in Egypt. The national poverty rate is 32.5%; and it is 26.73%&nbsp; in urban governorates, 14.31% in urban Lower Egypt, 27.29% in rural Lower Egypt, and 30.02% in urban Upper Egypt. Broken down by governorates in Upper Egypt, Assyout is the poorest, with a poverty rate of 66.7%, followed by Sohag (59.6%), Luxor (55.3%), and Minya (54.7%) (CAPMAS, 2018).&nbsp;
Figure 1: Poverty rates
<img style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" src="https://lh7-us.googleusercontent.com/InxmSZGip70Av4t4FpA2v9ypOkjCkE6Tob_99Fzk3Kbh_aclqgA5BXg5NdYmQ-_PMTz4zGUXA2CvQnxYUZbEnb8SW2ezleBerEjK3ilk3gvq44mr1zqL0rJDHA663xBXDQ4yL8YKXPz3kC-KN_acaw" width="484" height="264">
This situation raises a question; why does rural Upper Egypt remain the poorest region in the country despite efforts to extend coverage under various social protection schemes?&nbsp;
The Takaful and Karama social assistance programs cover some 15 million people, focusing largely on the governorates of Minya, Giza, Assyout, Sohag, Beni Soueif, Fayyoum, and Qena. In a similar fashion, the Dignified Life initiative covers 143 villages across Egypt, 85% of which are in Upper Egypt.2 This is in addition to anti-poverty efforts by large civic associations, which provide food, clothing, and basic necessities. While expanding these aid-oriented social protection programs that target the poor will certainly increase spending on aid programs, in the absence of a holistic developmental vision to advance the region, it will bring no parallel developmental return. The causes of poverty in the rural south are structural, related to the area&rsquo;s predominantly agricultural economy and its capacity to create decent, productive jobs that can lift people out of poverty and strengthen modern values that spur development.&nbsp;
<h3>The specificity of unequal development in Egypt</h3>
In the case of Egypt, geographic disparities in development are too complex to be captured by simple statistics that view the countryside as a homogenous whole (Adly, 
2020). In fact, one risk when explaining geographically based gaps is an analysis based simply on comparing numbers and data on urban and rural areas. Other dimensions must be considered when designing policies and interventions, in particular the distribution of basic services. It is therefore important to consider the share of basic services extended to hamlets and other village satellites and develop distribution criteria for services based on changes currently underway, including the increasing population of Egyptian villages and the geographic spread of their satellite areas (for planning criteria see Urban Planning Authority, 2014).
The rural Upper Egypt suffers from a compound developmental gap in education, health, and employment, which are less available and of poor quality. The gap in education, for example, is clear when comparing the national percentage of people who have never attended school (14% of males, 25% of females) with the rate in Upper Egypt (18% of males, 34% of females), which also points to another gap in gender. In health, the disparities are evident in numerous indicators, including infant mortality, which is 35/1,000 in Upper Egypt compared to less than 20/1,000 nationally (Othman, 2019). Another clear example are primary schools, which are established in villages, but not in hamlets and village satellites regardless of proximity or the lack thereof. The same goes for the distribution of primary health care and other basic services (Adly, 2010). More seriously, development efforts by NGOs are typically directed to population centers because these areas have the services that enable them to operate, which only compounds the geographic disparities to the detriment of already more marginalized peripheral and satellite areas.&nbsp;
<h3>A new development model to escape the spiral</h3>
As noted above, interventions by the state and many NGOs revolve around expanded social safety nets and poverty assistance. This will not promote the development of the south, as the current reality demonstrates. Despite these efforts, the poverty rate fell only 4% from 2015 to 2018. As such, the old paradigm must be abandoned for a broader model of development premised on the right to a decent job. If guaranteed, this right would enable citizens and their families to enjoy other rights like education and health. Starting from the right to decent work requires approaching poverty in Upper Egypt from different avenues that address it holistically. Rather than focusing on the citizen as an individual, this approach aims to bring about a modernizing economic and social shift in the region on the following basis:&nbsp;
1- Agricultural modernization and the encouragement of agricultural industrialization:&nbsp;
The chief economic activity in Upper Egypt, agriculture suffers from immense problems resulting from the traditional nature of the sector in general and the disinterest in modernizing the sector nationally, which has led to reduced productivity. Growth rates in agricultural production declined from 4.43% in the period of 1991&ndash;2001 to 2.23% during 2011&ndash;2016. The sector also faces many constraints related to the competitiveness of agricultural products regionally and internationally, inefficient agricultural systems, inefficient water use, and substantial waste in food and value chains. Nearly 15% of crops are lost in harvesting, storage, and transport. All this means the sector is shedding labor (Ministry of Agriculture, 2019). Despite the generally traditional&nbsp; nature of the agricultural sector in Egypt, the challenge is bigger in rural Upper Egypt due to the lack of diversity in production and the region&rsquo;s inability to attract investments in other sectors. Small land holdings are the dominant form of possession in rural Egypt, with three-quarters of holdings covering less than 1 hectare. Average holdings are even smaller in rural Upper Egypt than in rural Lower Egypt. Moreover, the rural south is tied to sugarcane agriculture, which is of low value and difficult to abandon for technical reasons (ESCWA, 2020).&nbsp;
The first step toward a new model must therefore be the comprehensive modernization of the agricultural sector in Upper Egypt, converting it from a traditional, low productivity sector to a modern, value-added one that can attract labor. This should be coupled with good social protections, including social insurance and comprehensive health insurance, and guarantees for labor rights, which would formalize the sector. This requires pumping more public and private investment into the sector and action to change how it is managed, by the expansion of contract farming, the stimulation of agricultural organizations, the creation of cooperatives focused specifically on marketing, and mechanization. All of these measures will increase productivity and create new jobs in machinery maintenance and operation and the production of machine parts and equipment ( El-Hadad, 2013).&nbsp;
It must also include agricultural industrialization, which will achieve several things: 1) additional added value in the agricultural sector, 2) more permanent and semi-permanent jobs, particularly for women, 3) the prevention of crop wastage, 4) the provision of food and 5) the creation of a modern work ethic based on regular hours of work, punctuality, and contemporary labor standards, which will in turn help to positively change the dominant cultural system in the rural south.&nbsp;
2- The development and good governance of basic services:
The development of services like health, education, potable water, sanitation, roads, and transportation must proceed based on established standards such as access, quality, and sustainability. Basic service development is crucial for the proposed model of development for several reasons. Firstly, it is a major avenue for reducing poverty and achieving geographic justice, although there are many challenges to developing such services, chiefly the need for more government spending on them, particularly in deprived regions. This requires reassessing the priorities of state development institutions. Secondly, developing an integrated vision for the advancement of basic services in these regions considers the institutional reforms needed to make employment in these services attractive, particularly in health and educational facilities. Thirdly, moving rapidly ahead with decentralization and issuing a local administration law as a prelude to local elections, followed by the formation of popular local councils, will bring these services under the oversight of elected councils. In turn, this will make it easier for local communities to monitor services and lodge grievances if the service is not accessible or is of poor quality. Fourthly, efforts must be made to build institutional partnerships between state institutions, NGOs, and the private sector, in order to spur a qualitative shift in basic services on the basis of the aforementioned standards. Finally, a system must be developed for the good governance of basic services, allowing space for community participation. This should be coupled with a reassessment of the distribution standards for basic services to make distribution more equitable, ensuring that the periphery and satellite areas receive their fair share. In light of the dense population of Egyptian villages and the growing number of village satellites, this may require a reassessment of existing administrative divisions and the creation of new villages.&nbsp;
Yet, there is a basic precondition for the success of the two prongs of this development model: a radical shift in the nature of the citizen&rsquo;s relationship with the public space, to be achieved by:&nbsp;
<ol>
<li style="text-align: justify;"> Allowing stakeholders to organize, whether in cooperatives, farmers unions, or workers unions in agro-industry.&nbsp;</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"> Giving citizens space to participate in the administration and oversight of basic services by invigorating school boards of trustees and the boards of local health units while creating other organizational structures, such as stakeholders&rsquo; fora, to monitor the performance of public services. Such structures exist in many Asian countries with the goal of monitoring services and addressing impediments to efficient performance.&nbsp;</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"> Allowing for a broader institutional framework through administrative and fiscal decentralization, which is the foundation for achieving an institutional shift in the state-society relationship in Egypt.&nbsp; <hr></li>
</ol>
[1] A geographically based developmental disparity means that the population faces various types of marginalization at once. While everyone lives in a place that is poor and deprived, some also face discrimination on the basis of gender, age, physical condition, or religion. When any population group is marginalized due to overlapping factors such as geography, gender, and age, it is known as a compound disparity. [2] These are Ministry of Social Solidarity figures, both released on its website and announced at various forums on the Takaful and Karama program and the Dignified Life initiative.
<hr>
References
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;">
CAPMAS. (2019). The most important findings of the Household Income and Expenditure Survey, Food Subsidy, Poverty Indicators and the Poverty Map 2017-2018. <a style="color: #333333;" href="http://www.capmas.gov.eg">www.capmas.gov.eg</a>&nbsp;
</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400; font-size: 10pt;">
Adly, H. (2020). Geographical Disparity&nbsp; in Development: A complex problem. Journal of Democracy, Issue 77. [In Arabic].
</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400; font-size: 10pt;">
Urban Planning Authority. (2014). Guide to rates and planning standards for services in the Arab Republic of Egypt.
</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400; font-size: 10pt;">
Adly, H. (2010). Participatory needs&rsquo; assessment of the poorest 151 villages, First Phase. Social Contract Center. [In Arabic].
</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400; font-size: 10pt;">
Othman, M. (2019). Geographical Gap [Unpublished].
</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400; font-size: 10pt;">
Ministry of Agriculture. (2019). The updated strategy for sustainable agricultural development in Egypt 2030. [In Arabic].
</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400; font-size: 10pt;">
El-Hadad, Z. (2013). A brief summary of Egyptian Agriculture. Land Center for Human Rights. [In Arabic].
</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400; font-size: 10pt;">
ESCWA. (2020). Social protection in rural Egypt. UN ESCWA. <a style="color: #333333;" href="https://www.unescwa.org/publications/social-protection-rural-egypt">https://www.unescwa.org/publications/social-protection-rural-egypt</a>
</li>
</ul>

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