Twenty six percent of Egypt’s population lives in poverty, while forty nine percent of Upper Egypt cannot provide the basic needs of food, said Egypt’s Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics. Egypt’s unemployment rate has reached 13.2 percent and that number almost doubles in women totaling at 24.2 percent, said the agency. Egypt, the fifteenth most densely populated country in the world, has been experiencing a rise in poverty and food insecurity for past three years, according to reports released by the United Nations food agency and its partners. “This increase in food insecurity, malnutrition and poverty rates has not happened overnight, during this year or even during the past year… People’s inability to have adequate and nutritious food is largely attributed to rising poverty rates and a succession of crises from 2005 – including the avian influenza epidemic in 2006, the food, fuel and financial crises of 2007–09 and a challenging macroeconomic context in recent years,” said the UN World Food Programme (WFP) Egypt Representative and Country Director GianPietro Bordignon. According to the WFP and the Egyptian Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS), it is estimated…
