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Coping with adjustment and economic crisis in Egypt's countryside
Abstract
There are two strategic silences in the debates relating to economic liberalisation in Egypt and especially to the current agricultural strategy. These refer to the role of the peasantry or fellahin and to the position of women. Little is being said about the effect of the economic crisis on Egypt's rural producers and the rural households where women are enduring the most harsh consequences of structural adjustment. Despite a Social Fund for Development, intended to soften the blow for the poor resulting from adjustment (and presently approximately a very low $US600 million ‐ about $US10 for each Egyptian) debates inside Egypt remain largely at the level of the macro‐economy and national planning. Concerns of policy makers in the state or international agencies, like the World Bank and USAID (US Agency for International Development), are not focused upon social and economic conditions in the rural areas nor on the possible social consequences of adjustment (World Bank, 1992; USAID, 1992). Policy makers and planners are simply not addressing the stresses and strains that rural households are experiencing during economic crisis and the ways in which the fellahin are promoting strategies to sustain and transform their livelihoods.
This article is a preliminary assessment of how Egypt's current economic crisis is affecting two villages in the contrasting Governorates of Giza and Dakhalia. We also begin an assessment of whether the strategy pursued by the international agencies, and the state, is likely to address the problems expressed by the fellahin and what the consequences of the current strategy may have for rural dwellers. Our argument is that official preoccupation with issues of markets and prices, and the supply of inputs, as a vehicle for economic recovery, neglects the way in which people's relations of production and reproduction are sustained and the uneven level of people's productive capabilities.
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