The Decent Life (Haya Karima) presidential initiative was launched in 2019 when President Abdel Fattah El Sisi charged the Ministry of Social Solidarity with developing Egypt’s poorest 1,000 villages.
In December 2020, President Sisi expanded the initiative to include 4,500 villages within the framework of Egypt’s Sustainable Development Strategy: Vision 2030.
The initiative witnesses the aggregation of efforts of all presidential initiatives, including the ‘100 Million Healthy Lives’, ‘Solidarity and Dignity’, and ‘Egypt Without Debts’, among others.
It is called Egypt’s 21st century project, because it is not linked to any one geographical area, but it extends to all parts of Egypt.
It is not a single engineering work. Rather it includes thousands of projects that are implemented simultaneously in all parts of the country. It targets around 4,500 villages in 20 provinces with an investment of LE700 billion.
Half of the villages are in Upper Egypt – Assiout, Aswan, Beni Sueif, Fayoum, Luxor, el-Menya and Sohag.
The other rural areas are in Beheira, Damietta, Gharbia, Menoufeya, Qaluibia and Sharkia.
The stakeholders include state agencies, ministries, NGOs and the private sector.
More than half of Egypt’s 102 million people living in rural areas across the country are to benefit from this giant project, which will change their lives for the better within the next three years.
Decent Life aims for improved infrastructure and facilities, decent housing for the underprivileged, better health and education and developing youth centres, training, rehabilitation and employment and overall investment in human resources.
For the first time, the initiative saw the launch of indexes to measure the quality of life in rural Egypt in order to improve the proportion of sewage facilities, education, job creation and bringing services that are not yet available.
“The UN considers this initiative to be one of the best leading programmes for sustainable development worldwide,” the executive director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said in a recorded speech during the first conference of the ‘Decent Life’ initiative last July in the presence of President Sisi. The UN based this judgment on international standards such as fighting poverty and promoting gender equality.
The first phase targeted 134 villages in 11 governorates, benefiting 1.8 million people at all levels, which contributed to an improvement in the quality of life of 18 percentage points, and a decrease in the average poverty rate by 14 points.
Prime Minister Moustafa Madbouli described the Decent Life initiative as Egypt’s biggest mega-project in its modern history.
“The Suez Canal was Egypt’s mega-project in the 19th century. The construction of Aswan High Dam was Egypt’s mega-project in the 20th century and the Decent Life project is Egypt’s megaproject in the 21st century,” said the prime minister in the first conference on the Decent Life initiative held last year at the Cairo International Stadium.
It is the only project in the world to fulfill all the United Nations’ sustainable developments goals in the 21st century.
“There are already more than 20 presidential initiatives on health, education, as well as other issues, under the umbrella of Decent Life initiative,” the premier said.
The Decent Life initiative costs more than LE700 billion (about $44.6 billion).
“It is a 100 per cent Egyptian project,” the prime minister said.
“We went deep into problems and the accumulated economic crises over decades through the economic reform programme. The Egyptian people were the heroes who bore the impact of the reforms on their daily lives to secure a better future for the coming generations,” the president has said in recent remarks.
The president added: “This ambitious project marks the launch of a new Egyptian republic which is based on the concept of modern democratic state enjoying all capabilities at the military, economic, political and social levels. This modern state heeds the concepts of citizenship and accepting the other. It also seeks to achieve peace, stability and development.”
The presidential initiative ‘Decent Life’ has been successfully included in the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development (GPSDD). This move is considered recognition of Egypt’s pioneering role in achieving strategic development goals (SDGs) in rural communities.
The initiative rests on four pillars: raising living standards and investing in human capital, developing infrastructure services, improving facilities for human development and achieving sustainable development through improving basic services such as health, education, water, and sanitation.
The achievements of Decent Life project included providing up to 50,000 protection and social care interventions, covering 47 villages with sanitation services, with investments of more than one billion pounds and increasing the coverage rate of drinking water services from 86 per cent to 94 per cent.
Doubling the amount of water produced in the targeted villages with investments totalling LE128 million and implementation of 125 projects in electricity and public lighting at a cost of LE240 million are among the achievements of the Decent Life project.
The accomplishments also included paving 188 kilometres of road costing LE319 million, adding 1,100 new classrooms to accommodate 44,000 students, raising the efficiency of 16,000 homes, and providing free health services to 117,000 people.
A recent report by the Ministry of Planning and Economic Development measures the impact of efforts undertaken by the state in the field of developing rural communities within the framework of the Decent Life initiative since its launch by President Sisi in 2019.
The report showed that 1,675 household water connections, 706 domestic sewage tanks and 1,680 domestic sewage networks have been installed. The initiative also established 3,000 nurseries, 82 veterinary units, 51 health units, 26 youth centres, nine social units, and 120,000 housing units.
Decent Life has received acclaim from international and regional organisations as well as world leaders who asserted that the project is an inspirational model for modernising the countryside.