Egypt

Prime ministerial decree No.1167/2018​.

Egypt’s participation mechanisms are a joint effort between the Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Planning and the Ministry of Local Development. The main goal for Egypts participation mechanisms is ensuring community support for the decisions made by government, improve people’s satisfaction and effective participation in drafting local development priorities in their communities based on announced objective standards and in the framework of available financial resources. On the local level: There are Participating mechanisms in governorates. For example, “The Upper Egypt Development Project in Qena and Sohag” (UELDP ) relies on community participation consultation meetings to determine the priority of selected development projects in the local units of the governorate centers. Public consultation takes place through citizens proposing priority projects within the financial ceiling and then include the outputs in a report to be sent to the planning teams which are made up of gov. officials and private citizens. Rejected projects are placed in the exclusion list with the justification for rejection. The draft final plan is uploaded on the governorate website (For example Qena and Sohag) where the local development forum can express their views on the plan. The forum will then send feedback to the Planning committee and to the Economic Council (includes popular and executive representatives) and then to the Steering Committee which includes representatives from all relevant ministries including the Ministry of Planning & Local Development, Ministry of Finance and Ministry of International Cooperation. The consultation meetings were applied on the Markaz level (sub local level) in the framework of UELDP during the designing phase ​for the annual investment plans (projects affecting people lives which are represented in five key programs: electricity, roads & transportation, environment improvement, security, fire-fighting, traffic systems) of Qena and Suhag governorates, as one of the conformity requirements for the World Bank partially funded program. The Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Local Development and Ministry of planning accordingly considered adopting the idea of mainstreaming the experience in the remaining governorates.

Discussion on PB initiative taking place in Alexandria City have resulted in the following recommendations that will affect tendencies in the initiative:

1. Creating a 3-year incremental process with a year-by-year evaluation;
2. Involving different groups of stakeholders so that citizens can feel the process as a real co-decisional space;
3. PB could choose a % of institutional budget of some sectors of public action;
4. Shaping a MULTICHANNEL process, which aims at maximizing social inclusion of categories usually at the margins of political and civic life, especially young people;
5. Creating a Steering Committee that can include representatives of the 4 ministries involved, NGOs, academics, CSOs, un-organized citizens and the donors that co-fund the pilot experiences. It will be in charge of creating the first plan of action, phases of cycle, timeline and rules of the pilots, and exert vigilance and oversight on the processes’ implementation;
6. Using online as well as offline channels of engagement, and information and communication technologies (ICTs) that is user-friendly and provides security, as well as using various multimedia techniques such as infographics;
7. Elaborate a Charter of Principles of Egyptian PBs. This document will clarify main rules and roles to which an intense model of PB must embed;
8. Establishing a monitoring system to follow-up the projects and polls;
9. Providing a campaign of training on financial literacy for better inclusion of citizens;
10. Engagement of personnel inside the involved; administration, in order to have a group committed in implementing PB as well as professionals (of enterprises, NGOs or CBOs) trained in facilitation of participation and resolution of conflicts, so to guarantee a proper and more neutral moderation of public meetings and/or web-based chat on the topics involved by PB;
11. Finally, some programmatic agreements are suggested with academic institutions, so to mobilize students for enriching the pilots.