Inside a modest flat in one of Cairo’s suburbs, Hamida El-Sayed (a pseudonym) spends her evenings recalculating what remains of her limited monthly income, which does not exceed EGP 4,000, about a quarter of which goes to paying the rent. Among the few remaining figures, she tries to provide for the needs of her two children, the elder of whom is not yet over seven years old. Since her divorce and the father’s refusal to pay maintenance, she has found herself in a lone daily struggle to secure the most basic necessities of life: food, medicine, education, and a roof that protects her small family.

Hamida, who is not yet thirty, tells Zawia3 that “the last time red meat was placed on their table goes back about two months. Since then, she has come to rely on less costly meals, such as fried potatoes, pasta and fava beans. Even when her circumstances allow her to buy a source of protein, her choice is often confined to poultry, as it is the least costly compared with red meat.”

Hamida embodies the reality of millions of Egyptians who face growing difficulty in meeting their basic needs amid economic deterioration. About 21% of the population, which numbers 107.5 million people, suffer from multidimensional poverty, according to the World Food Programme, while food security challenges are mounting. According to the Global Hunger Index 2024, Egypt ranks 63rd out of 127 countries, while the World Food Programme reports that 49% of households do not have enough food and that 6.5% of children under five suffer from stunting or wasting.

At a time when the Egyptian government declares, through Finance Minister Ahmed Kouchouk during a G20 meeting, its commitment to achieving food security and providing support to more than 60 million citizens, the testimonies of ordinary families reveal a gap between the official discourse and lived reality. Through figures and official local and international data, Zawia3 traces whether government policies have actually succeeded in guaranteeing food security for Egyptians, or whether the language of numbers tells us a different truth.

The food reality of Egyptians

Although the food alternatives Hamida resorts to satisfy her hunger, they have had a negative effect on her health. In recent months she has suffered from repeated bouts of faintness, dizziness and exhaustion that kept her from her simplest daily tasks. When she went to a hospital that provides health services at reduced prices, the diagnosis came back (severe anaemia ), which the doctor explained as the result of malnutrition.

According to the World Health Organization, malnutrition includes deficiencies, excesses or imbalances in a person’s intake of energy and nutrients, and comprises three main groups: undernutrition (wasting, stunting, underweight). Official data also reveal that malnutrition represents a major health challenge in Egypt, as about 40% of the population suffer from diseases related to unhealthy nutrition, according to statements by Dr Abla El-Alfy, Deputy Minister of Health and Population, on the sidelines of the conference on the “Urgent Plan for Population and Development” and the launch of the National Programme for the Prevention of Stunting and Malnutrition. She also explained that the stunting rate in Egypt stands at 13%, while 43% suffer from anaemia and 11% from obesity.

Hamida’s story reveals that the availability of food does not necessarily mean that people are able to obtain it or make use of it in a way that guarantees stability. The concept of food security, as adopted by the World Food Summit in 1996, rests on four interconnected dimensions: availability in terms of production and stocks, economic and social access, utilisation through balanced nutrition and health, and stability in the face of fluctuations and crises.

A survey conducted by Zawia3 as part of the preparation of the report “When meat becomes a class luxury: Egypt faces the challenge of food security”, which covered 100 participants from various governorates, shows that the overwhelming majority were directly affected by the rise in meat prices over the past year. 89% of participants in the 25–40 age group confirmed a decline in their purchasing power compared with the previous year, attributing this mainly to the steep rise in prices, which 96% of them confirmed.

The rise in the prices of red meat and basic commodities since 2016, following the flotation of the pound, has led 43% of citizens to eat meat only once a month and 73% to buy smaller quantities, while 79% pointed to its effect on their sense of dignity and 52% held the government responsible, all of them stressing the need for immediate state intervention, according to the results of the survey.

In recent years, the prices of red meat and basic commodities in Egypt have seen successive increases since 2016 as the Egyptian pound declined against the dollar. The price of meat rose from EGP 65 in 2012 to exceed the EGP 400 mark in 2025, according to statistics from the Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics, making it an almost luxury commodity that most families find difficult to obtain.

In the same vein, the prices of farm poultry (white poultry, the most popular) started at EGP 18 per kilo in December 2012, then recorded gradual increases to reach EGP 28.5 in December 2016, before jumping sharply in recent years as a result of rising feed, transport and production costs, and then falling by a few pounds at the end of 2025, coinciding with a slight decline in the dollar exchange rate.

Likewise, the prices of dairy products and eggs saw sharp increases during the same period, similar to meat, showing that the price crisis has extended to the basic commodities on which millions of Egyptians depend every day, according to the Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics.

In the same vein, the prices of legumes, including lentils and fava beans, the most important sources of plant protein on which low-income families depend, saw sharp increases in recent years, and the price of rice, a staple food for these families, also rose. According to data from the Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics, the price of a kilo of rice rose from low and relatively stable levels, multiplying several times, the price of lentils of both the yellow and red varieties jumped, and the price of fava beans increased considerably, turning these basic commodities from affordable alternatives into an additional burden weighing on millions of Egyptians.

Commenting on these figures, MP Freddy El-Bayadi, a member of the House of Representatives for the Egyptian Social Democratic Party, says that “food security is not merely numbers or government statements; it is a broader concept, as the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has explained.”

He continues, speaking to Zawia3: “The true definition rests on four pillars: availability of food, ease of access to it, its quality and safety, and then its sustainability in the long term.” Looking at the Egyptian reality, we find that the government says there is an abundance of some basic commodities, but this is not enough for us to consider that we have sustainable food security.”

El-Bayadi believes that commodity prices rise repeatedly, and that there are broad groups of citizens who are no longer able to obtain sufficient and balanced food, which means that the element of “access” is not sufficiently achieved. Therefore, the government must face the fact that Egypt depends heavily on imports of wheat, oils and animal feed, and consequently any external crisis, such as a war or price fluctuations, affects the country directly, which means that there is a problem with the element of ‘sustainability’.

He adds: “Therefore, I believe that food security in Egypt is still at a fragile stage, and for it to be achieved, we must work to narrow the gap between official statements and the figures that reflect reality, support local production, control prices and expand social protection networks, so that citizens can obtain sufficient and healthy food at a suitable price.”

According to data from the Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics and the Central Bank of Egypt, the cost of living in Egypt saw sharp fluctuations over the past decade. The average annual inflation rate recorded its first peak in June 2017, following the decision to liberalise the exchange rate, when the rate exceeded 30%. The country then entered a period of relative calm between 2019 and 2021, in the same month, when inflation fell below 10%. However, conditions escalated again to an unprecedented degree with the global and local economic crisis, recording the second peak in 2023 at a rate approaching 36%, before the figures began a relative decline in 2025.

Multidimensional poverty: a deeper picture of the living crisis

The government’s statements indicate that about 20% of the budget is directed to supporting food security and that subsidy programmes reach 60 million citizens, but a paper by the Socialist Popular Alliance Party on the (2025/2026) budget, prepared by economic researcher Elhamy El-Merghany and a copy of which Zawia3 obtained, shows a more complex picture. While the item for subsidies, grants and social benefits amounts to EGP 742.5 billion, large parts of it go to paying the debts of the insurance and pension funds, bonuses and allowances, and electricity subsidies, while the per capita subsidy on ration cards has been frozen at EGP 50 since 2018 and the number of beneficiaries has declined. By contrast, public debt service takes up EGP 4.38 trillion, about two-thirds of the budget.

This is consistent with the analysis by the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights of the (2021/2022) budget, which showed that half of the social protection allocations, about EGP 286 billion in (2020/2021) and EGP 283.3 billion in (2021/2022), also went to paying the debts of the insurance funds, with a slight increase in ration subsidies to EGP 87.2 billion and a 1.4% decline in spending on support for the household sector, while the allocations directed to government bodies rose by 7%.

In 2022, a report issued by CAPMAS revealed that more than a fifth of Egypt’s population live below the multidimensional poverty line, a measure that does not merely calculate income but monitors the different forms of deprivation that affect individuals’ lives, from education and healthcare to housing and basic services.

Although the Income, Expenditure and Consumption Survey is the most important tool for measuring poverty and tracking changes in living standards, the Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics has not issued any updates since the ( 2019/2020) survey, at a time when the country has seen unprecedented waves of inflation and a sharp decline in citizens’ purchasing power. This absence of updated data leaves a clear gap for researchers and decision-makers and makes it difficult to assess the effectiveness of government policies and social protection programmes, according to Mohamed Ramadan, economic researcher at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights.

According to the multidimensional poverty report, the poverty rate rose markedly in rural areas, where about a third of the population there are considered multidimensionally poor, compared with a rate of less than half that in urban areas. The report shows that one in every five Egyptians suffers from multidimensional poverty, with a prevalence rate of 21%, while the “intensity of poverty” reaches 37%, meaning that poor households are deprived in more than a third of the indicators on which this measure relies.

In the Egyptian countryside specifically, the crisis runs deeper; about 28% of the population there face compound deprivation covering education, health and basic services, compared with only 12% in urban areas, which reflects the clear social and spatial disparity in the distribution of opportunities and living standards within the country.

The World Bank also revealed that the national poverty rate in Egypt rose to 32.5% in 2022, compared with 29.7% in the 2019–2020 fiscal year, which led to continued economic pressure on Egyptian families despite the allocations announced in the budget.

Since 1990, the World Bank has used an international poverty line estimated at one dollar per person per day ( ~EGP 48 per day), equivalent to (~ EGP 1,440 per month), to measure extreme poverty, in line with living standards in the world’s poorest countries. Over time, this line was adjusted to keep pace with economic changes and the rising cost of living, and it currently stands at 2.15 dollars per person per day (in purchasing power parity terms), equivalent to (~EGP 103 per day) (~3,000 per month). This amount is defined as the minimum needed to secure basic needs (food, clothing and shelter) in a typical low-income country.

Malnutrition and the health conditions of Egyptians

Under the title “Regional Overview of Food Security and Nutrition in the Near East and North Africa”, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) revealed an increase in malnutrition in Egypt over the past two decades, as the proportion of those affected rose from 4.8% in 2002 to 8.5% in 2023, raising their number from 6.2 to 9.4 million people.

Meanwhile, obesity among adults exceeded 30% in several Arab countries, including Egypt. The country also saw a rise in rates of stunting and overweight among children under five, which points to the forms of malnutrition, from nutrient deficiency to obesity and the non-communicable diseases associated with it, according to the World Health Organization.

In this context, Mohamed Ramadan, economic researcher at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, affirms that the economic crisis has left a clear mark on citizens’ livelihoods, but the exact scale of this impact is unknown because the results of the Income and Expenditure Survey for the (2020/2022) round and the rounds after it have not been published.

He adds: “There is no doubt that the economic crisis has directly affected citizens’ livelihoods, according to the statistics of CAPMAS, but until now we do not know precisely the scale of this impact, since the Income and Expenditure Survey, which is the main indicator for understanding the state of poverty in society, has not yet been published, whether the survey for 2020/2022 or the subsequent survey, and therefore the figures are not available to us.”

Speaking to Zawia3, Ramadan points to a study conducted by the International Food Policy Research Institute during the first lockdown period due to the coronavirus pandemic, in which the results of the survey, which covered a number of households, showed that 85% of them reduced their spending on food. He also draws attention to the inflation rates in 2020 and 2022, which exceeded 30%, while food inflation rose even further, and the prices of some commodities exceeded the 100% mark, according to CAPMAS statistics.

The economic researcher explains that it is natural for this rise in prices to lead to a decline in household consumption in terms of quantity, or to a shift towards cheaper alternatives and reduced consumption of meat and poultry, which aggravates the public health crisis in the long term. Egypt already suffers from high rates of anaemia and thinness and, at the same time, high rates of obesity and overweight. This paradox is directly linked to an unbalanced dietary pattern whose main cause is high prices.

As for the talk of achieving food security through current government policies, Ramadan believes that the figures on the ground do not support it ; because the increase in the agricultural area announced by the state is not of the size being promoted, according to data and fact-checking websites.

The Income and Expenditure Survey issued by CAPMAS defines poverty as “the inability to provide the minimum of basic needs for the individual or the family, these needs being food, housing, clothing, and education, health and transport services.

The Income and Expenditure Survey for the period 2017/2018 reported a rise in the proportion of people below the poverty line to 32.5%, up from 27.8% of the total population in 2015, while this proportion fell to about 29.7% in 2019/2020. Since that date, CAPMAS has not issued the Income and Expenditure Survey with its usual details, as the agency confined itself to publishing a report on the state of multidimensional poverty in Egypt without the detailed data that used to be published over the past years.

Dependence on imports

The agricultural area in Egypt amounts to about 10 million feddans, and although the state has expanded land reclamation projects to increase production, agricultural output is still insufficient to achieve food security. The country depends heavily on imports to close the gap in consumption, as local wheat production covers only about (45–50%) of needs, while the remaining quantities are imported in millions of tonnes every year.

Meanwhile, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) indicates in a report that Egypt’s high dependence on food imports makes it highly vulnerable to external crises, especially in periods of poor harvests or rising global prices. Cairo’s dependence on imports is estimated at about 45% of domestic demand. The report also pointed out that successive global crises, from the coronavirus pandemic to the war in Ukraine and climate fluctuations, have increased the fragility of this situation through rising commodity prices and disrupted supply chains, which was reflected directly in local prices and citizens’ purchasing power.

The statistics of CAPMAS on average per capita meat consumption in Egypt between 2015 and 2023 show a notable change in consumption patterns. Beef saw a significant decline from ( 9.2) kilograms in 2015 to between (5.4 and 5.7) kilograms during the period from 2019 to 2023, while consumption of buffalo meat fell from 3.2 kilograms to around 1.1 and 1.5 kilograms only in recent years.

By contrast, poultry consumption rose from (8.7) kilograms in 2015 to peak at ( 16.7) kilograms in 2021, before settling at around (13 to 14) kilograms in 2022 and 2023. This indicates that Egyptian families increasingly rely on poultry as a less costly alternative to red meat, amid rising prices and declining purchasing power.

Meanwhile, a report by the FAO food organisation indicates that the global “average meat consumption” (of all kinds) is close to 41.3 kg per person per year.

Meanwhile, data on vegetable consumption in Egypt during the period from 2015 to 2023 indicate notable changes in the consumption pattern. Potato consumption rose from about 29.3 kilograms per person per year in 2015 to 45.3 kilograms in 2023, recording the highest increase among all items, which indicates the growing reliance on it as a low-cost food compared with other commodities. By contrast, tomato consumption gradually decreased from 56.1 kilograms to about 47.4 kilograms at the end of the period, even though it is one of the staple vegetables in the Egyptian diet.

Aubergine consumption saw marked fluctuation, with increases recorded that reached EGP 12 per kilogram in 2025. As for courgettes, peppers and cucumbers, their consumption rates remained relatively low compared with other crops. As for fruit consumption in Egypt during the period from 2015 to 2023, it saw variations between items, but the annual consumption rate remained low.

Vegetables chart

Fruit chart

In this context, economist Elhamy El-Merghany affirms that official data and monitoring reports clearly show a decline in the per capita share of a number of crops and food commodities, which is a direct indicator of the shrinking capacity of local production to keep pace with the needs of population growth and economic pressures. According to him, this is due to weak incentives for farmers and poor management of agricultural policies.

Speaking to Zawia3, El-Merghany explains that contract farming has not achieved its objectives; the purchase prices set by the state are not commensurate with production costs, which pushes some farmers to refrain from growing certain crops, as happened in Minya with sugarcane. Added to this is the delay in paying farmers their dues, which damages their confidence in agricultural policies, hinders rural investment and ultimately affects the stability of the supply of strategic crops.

El-Merghany points out that the import file has come under the dominance of a group of major traders who monopolise imports of basic commodities and share out the market on terms that weaken food security and food sovereignty, which increases the fragility of the Egyptian market in the face of global price fluctuations and limits the state’s ability to control supplies and pricing.

He adds that heavy dependence on wheat imports has placed Egypt in a position of acute vulnerability to international crises, explaining that the “Russia–Ukraine” war revealed how dangerous it is to depend on other countries to secure strategic commodities, after the country was exposed to direct shocks in supplies and prices.

El-Merghany also believes that the liberalisation of the exchange rate as part of the economic reform programme since 2016 has had a negative impact on the food security of the poorest groups, as currency fluctuations led to higher import costs and higher prices of local goods, pushing families to cut their consumption of meat, poultry and dairy products and resort to alternatives of lower nutritional quality, as documented by field studies that recorded a marked decline in the consumption of proteins and essential nutrients.

He continues that the performance of the General Authority for Supply Commodities in securing the strategic reserve faces growing criticism, as Egypt still depends on imports to cover most of its needs of wheat, oils, sugar and legumes, amid fluctuation in the quantities purchased locally, which leaves the country exposed to the pressures of fluctuations in the international market.

He says: “Current government policies in the fields of agriculture and supply have not addressed the fragility of the food system; rather, they have increased its exposure to external shocks and reduced the quality of nutrition among broad sections of citizens. Real reform requires redesigning the incentives offered to farmers, improving the supply and strategic storage system, combating monopoly in imports and guaranteeing effective social protection networks for the most affected groups.”

In recent years, official statements about expanding the agricultural area and achieving food security have been repeated, yet local and international figures reflect a different reality; while the citizen’s ability to secure a balanced diet is declining, the gap between the government’s discourse and living reality is widening, amid growing dependence on imports and mounting debts that burden the general budget with repayment obligations. As this picture persists, the most pressing question remains: what is the fate of Egyptians’ food security?

Editorial correction: The first version of this report and its chart attributed the multidimensional poverty rate (21%) and the share of households without enough food (49%) to the Global Hunger Index 2024. Both figures come from the World Food Programme’s Egypt page, as published by the programme.

Editorial correction: The first version of this report classed rice among legumes and sources of plant protein. Rice is a cereal, according to the classification of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

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