Egypt in the Twenty First Century: Challenges for Development (Routledge Advances in Middle East and

Published November 29, Reference - Pages ISBN - CAT# Y Series: Routledge Advances in Middle East and Islamic Studies.
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Egypt in the Twenty First Century is a much needed investigation into the long-term economic reform and restructuring and examines the challenges ahead for the country. It provides authoritative analyses from a collection of respected academics and a wealth of new data. It will appeal to all those interested in the political economy of contemporary Egypt. The level of Development at the Turn of the Century 2. Evaluating Development, 3. The Standard of Living Part 2: Evaluating Developmental Experience and Sectoral Performance 4.

Camille Paglia (full)

Developmental Strategies, ; Progress and Challenges for the 21st century 5. Full Employment; The Challenge into the 21st century 6. People Participation and the Political System 8. Neither of these contrasting sets of principles was considered to be relevant to an adequate analysis of rural underdevelopment problems or adequate for making public decisions and policy choice in the newly independent poor nations following the Second World War.

From the sufficient evidence accumulated in the s and s by experts from FAO, the International Labour Organization and the World Bank, as well as several analysts in academic institutions, principles of development economics emerged. These assigned an active role to the state in introducing pro-poor institutional reforms that bring about the redistribution of assets land and education with economic growth under a planning mechanism.

However, the dominance of these paradigms of development economics was short-lived.

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In the s and s, neo-liberal principles prevailed in the context of structural adjustment and foreign debt recovery conditionalities. As a close observer of land reform policy choice during the past four decades, I may make a few remarks. They range from ideas on the sacredness of private property and freedom of entrepreneurs in agriculture to expropriation and rent control. Countries' experiences show a variation in how far the state would intervene to restrain economic freedoms if, for example, landowners and moneylenders abused such freedom or the social function of land property, and violated the country's established rules on social justice and public welfare.

Second, the intensity of land reform programmes i. This was a period that corresponded to the time when most developing countries gained independence following a long period of colonial rule. These historical events suggest that national leaderships decided to reform land tenure systems strategically in order to condition social and economic progress at an early stage of national reconstruction.

Despite some weakness in implementation, I consider this period the golden age for the emancipation of poor peasants.

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The intensity of agrarian transformation peaked at the time of the inauguration of this journal and the holding of five relevant world conferences: Unfortunately, this periodical monitoring mechanism was discontinued in My third remark concerns the peculiarity of each country's land tenure system, requiring the type of reform that is relevant to each country's land tenure system.

For example, the Mexican reform was not a once-and-for-all reform. Since , it has established the permanent rights of the peasants to the restitution of their communal land system ejido. The Italian land reform is another example of the peculiarity of each programme and its relevance not only to the national conditions but to each region of the same country: This peculiarity of each country's agrarian system is an essential consideration that continues in the twenty-first century.

Fourth, the limited experience of implementing this market-assisted land reform suggests an ambiguity with regard to both the assumed political neutrality or the politics-free land market and the boundaries between the market and the role of the state. It also suggests the importance of the complementarity between the market and the state, whereby the latter: The historical experience of a capitalist economy such as the United States tells us that state initiative enabled the land market to function and expand the American rural economy.

This was rooted in the pioneering state promotion of family farms by the Lincoln Homestead Act of Supported by anti-trust monopoly laws and substantial public investment in necessary infrastructure, it opened up rural America to private investment and competitive market forces.

Similarly, in the capitalist economy of Great Britain, the institutional monopoly of landlords was checked and prices of land and rents were long regulated by the laws of and initiated by the President of the British Land Tenure Association, the wellknown political economist, Mill. These laws were enforced in order to make farm tenancy and land tenure secure, this being the foundation of an egalitarian and efficient rural market economy see El-Ghonemy, , Chapter 5. Without reforming the institutional monopoly, the lauded British tenancy system did not work in several countries e.

Tenants cannot afford to pay the market price of land without the help of special credit facilities, such as those provided by international financing agencies to governments adopting market-assisted land reform at a time when they are already suffering from heavy foreign debts. Moreover, empirical evidence and common sense tell us that, in a market economy, the probability of obtaining a commercial loan is close to zero for landless wageworkers who wish to own a piece of land in their lifetime. Their experience suggests that the proportion of beneficiaries and agricultural land redistributed to total agricultural households and agricultural land, respectively, are major determinants of the reduction in poverty and inequality of land distribution.

Egypt in the Twenty First Century: Challenges for Development - Google Книги

Two examples of private property-market economies Egypt and the Republic of Korea illustrate the influence of the important size ratio of land ownership ceiling to beneficiaries' units. Egypt's land reforms of , and established a high ceiling of 40 ha and an average size of redistributed irrigated units of 1 ha. This ratio of The and reforms in the Republic of Korea established a low ceiling of 3 ha and an average of 1 ha of beneficiaries' unit size. This ratio of 3: In both countries, household income distribution was also improved by land redistribution associated with intensive labour employment and wider access to education being seen as an important asset human capital.

A combination of greater access to land and education opportunities has reduced the incidence of poverty among the rural population substantially: In contrast, Brazil, Colombia and South Africa, having had no redistributive agrarian reform, instituted large land settlement schemes in public land.


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In the s, they adopted the neo-liberal, market-based land title transfer between willing sellers and willing buyers with direct financial support. According to data, the Gini index of land concentration was very high at 0. The level of rural poverty estimated as the proportion of poor households to total rural population was 73 percent in Brazil, 45 percent in Colombia, and At the conference on agrarian reform organized by the German Foundation for International Development in Bonn in March , non-governmental organizations from different countries implementing the land market approach expressed their views on the slowness of this market approach.

In particular, the World Federation of Small Landholders La Via Campesina demanded a revision in this approach which "operates on the principle of 'land for those who can afford it'". This organization and the Food Information and Action Network expressed the fear that the market-assisted approach to land reform "is leading more to a reconcentration rather than redistribution of land and the reduction of its inequality" DSE, , p. A relapse in Egypt's land reform gains has taken place since the adoption of neo-liberal paradigms contained in the economic reforms agreed with the IMF and the World Bank.

Land tenancy arrangements have been deregulated, resulting in the eviction of tenants and a sharp rise in rental values determined by the market. The consequences have been increased rural poverty, landlessness and inequality El-Ghonemy, , Chapter 4 and Table 2. The reduction of poverty and inequality of land distribution, associated with sustained agricultural output growth, have been the common concern of the international community since the s.

Given this, what are the prospects for meeting current rural development challenges in the context of changing policy choices and redefining the role of the state? Before addressing this question, we need to understand the order of magnitude of these challenges. A study El-Ghonemy, Tyler and Couvreur, conducted a statistical analysis of comparable data from 21 developing countries. It used a cross-sectional intercountry multiple regression method.

The dependent variable was the proportion of poor people to total rural population for each country, and the explanatory independent variables were the Gini index of the inequality of land distribution and real agricultural output growth. Given the data limitations, the results show a highly significant and positive relationship between poverty and the inequality index, compared with an insignificant and negative relationship between poverty and agricultural growth.

Similar results were obtained by other researchers, using different samples of developing countries Bardhan, ; Griffin and Ghose, In simple terms, my statistical analysis shows that a decrease of one-third in the land distribution inequality index results in a reduction in the poverty level of onehalf in about 12 - 14 years. The same level of poverty reduction may be obtained in 60 years by agricultural growth sustained at an annual average of 3 percent and without changing land distribution inequality. Two leading economists of the World Bank have recently examined these important quantified rural development issues of inequality, poverty and growth, and their relationships to one another Deininger and Squire, They used good quality data on inequality of landholding distribution between the s and s for 66 developing countries.

Their aim was to explore why several countries have failed both to increase economic growth rate or realized only slow growth , and to reduce poverty after their implementation of economic reform programmes i.

Challenges for Development

Their results indicate a negative effect of land inequality on subsequent income growth. The inequality hurts the rural poor through two channels: Empirical evidence also suggests that land distribution inequality increased: The increased inequality has affected growth negatively. Alesina and Rodrik obtained similar results. The conclusion of these studies is that a combination of increased aggregate investment and land redistribution for the benefit of the poor raises their incomes significantly, and is an effective way of reducing poverty and increasing economic growth.

Disaggregating the poor farming population by tenure status and holding size helps to understand the magnitude of the challenges ahead. FAO Agricultural Censuses since have indicated increases in the numbers of smallholdings, while the share of their access has not increased.


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    • This suggests a continued fragmentation of these small units, where most of the foodgrain rice, wheat and maize is produced by women, especially in Africa. These female farmers have been disadvantaged in two ways by the marketbased land property transfer, particularly the individualization of the centuries-held communal customary land.

    One is the loss of traditional equal rights in land because bureaucracies usually consider men as the head of the household; this despite the fact that in most SSA countries nearly 40 - 50 percent of all rural households are headed by women IFAD, , Table 6.

    Egypt in the Twenty First Century: Challenges for Development

    The other is the loss of women's traditional entitlement for self-produced food crops. My study for the UNRISD shows that the individualization of customary communal tenure in Malawi resulted in the purchase of land by non-agriculturalist land speculators, who switched production away from food crops into tobacco El-Ghonemy, Many former landholders became wage-workers and lost their household food security.

    This market-oriented land tenure and such use shifts are worrying indeed with regard to rural households' likelihood of food insecurity, and the loss of women's customary entitlements. The great challenge is to cope with the rising demand for access to land as represented by the increasing numbers of landless wage-dependent workers, in particular, and the agricultural workforce, in general. This trend is compounded by another alarming trend of increasing concentration of land. At the same time, the aggregate supply of cultivable land is diminishing. To examine this downward trend, I used the ratio of area to workers in agriculture as a proxy for the supply of and demand for cultivable land, calculated from FAO data for 87 developing countries, including the projected growth of agricultural workforce for the period - FAO, , and various FAO production yearbooks.

    I found that 63 percent of the 87 countries showed an alarming decline in this ratio. One possible explanation is government budgetary cuts imposed by the conditions of IMF-fiscal reform implemented by countries according to their priorities, including that for land development e. Moreover, employment opportunities for the growing numbers of agricultural workers have narrowed.

    Egypt in the Twenty First Century

    This is primarily as a result of rising unemployment in urban areas combined with the replacement of unskilled rural workers by more skilled and educated job-seekers competing for low-paid jobs, in addition to labour-displacing technology induced by free-trade globalization. In conclusion, one could ask how developing countries' governments can meet these challenges if the present trends continue into the twenty-first century, as their ability to address them directly has been restricted and their role in development redefined by neoliberalism reflected in conditionalities of price stabilization and foreign debt recovery agreements.

    Their response is made more difficult by the fear of being disadvantaged in terms of world trade competitiveness, including in their efforts to attract much needed foreign capital. The next two decades will be a testing time for governments seeking to address this dilemma. A failure to do so will increase the risk of social unrest and political instability. In the meantime, the debate in Land Reform , Land Settlement and Cooperatives will continue to enlighten us about how to face these challenges and about the difficult choices that present policy-makers with dilemmas in rural development.

    Distributive politics and economic growth. Poverty and "trickle-down" in rural India: Agricultural change and rural poverty. Agrarian structure in Latin America. Old questions and new realities: Current land policy in Latin America: Politica agraria en Chile: Making negotiated land reform work: New ways of looking at old issues: Access to land provides food security. Latin American land reforms in theory and practice. The political economy of rural poverty.