President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi said on Monday 20 September that the success of the economic reform programme adopted by the government in 2016 proved that Egypt’s vision was correct, stressing that the reforms helped the country face the repercussions of the coronavirus pandemic.

“Egypt is still implementing its promising economic reform programme that it started in 2016 in cooperation with the International Monetary Fund, and its results proved how the Egyptian vision was correct concerning the priorities and demands of the economic reform.” El-Sisi said in his pre-recorded speech in front of the UN’s Sustainable Developments Goals (SDG) Moment 2021 Summit via video conferencing.

The president recounted in his speech that the Egyptian economic reform programme did not only receive international praise, but it also enabled the Egyptian economy to face the repercussions of the pandemic and enabled the government to take measures to reduce its negative impacts.

“The success that Egypt managed to achieve on all these levels in the past few years would not have happened without the sacrifices made by the Egyptian citizen, who proved his capability to withstand hardships to build his nation and achieve his legitimate goals and aspirations,” The Egyptian president said, adding that the state’s vision from the beginning was to achieve development for the sake of the Egyptian citizen and his aspirations for decent living and housing as well as adequate work.

“This vision crystallised in the ‘Decent Life Initiative’, which I was honoured to launch recently and is one of the most ambitious and comprehensive development programmes.”

“It aims to achieve comprehensive development, including in the Egyptian countryside — where the vast majority of Egyptians live — in a way that enhances the state’s efforts to achieve balanced development and mobilise the necessary investments to improve the quality of life for citizens, eradicate poverty, and reduce unemployment rates,” the president explained.

The Decent Life Initiative — meaning ‘Hayah Karima’ in Arabic — is a series of countryside-focused national infrastructure projects. It was first initiated in 2019 by El-Sisi, who tasked the Ministry of Social Solidarity with developing Egypt’s poorest 1,000 villages.

In December 2020, the president expanded the initiative to include 4,500 villages within the framework of the sustainable development strategy dubbed ‘Egypt’s 2030 Vision.’

The first phase started in January 2021 with a budget of nearly EGP 200 billion and is due to be completed by the end of FY 2021-22.

Speaking about the importance of the 2030 SDGs, the Egyptian president discussed in his speech how the past two years have proven the importance of the SDGs, as they take into account the intersection between various economic and social fields and seek to make the most of the opportunities offered by the sustainable development agenda for international cooperation to finance development.

“Egypt presented its national voluntary review reports on implementing the SDGs — including its most recent report — during the last session of the High-Level Political Forum on SDGs in July 2021 due to its belief in the importance of showing the progress achieved nationally,” Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi said.

The Egyptian government adoption of the Egypt 2030 Vision is proof of its keenness to localise the UN’s SDGs by integrating them into policies and development programmes on all levels, the Egyptian president said.