Agriculture sector employs about 31% of the labour force and generates 14% of GDP in Egypt. Yet many challenges hinder the development of this vital sector including weak role of extension and advisory services (EAS). The present paper aims at analysing the contribution of public EAS to agriculture development in Egypt. A review of secondary data was used to give a general overview of the current status of EAS, policy framework and governance structures, main cooperation projects dealing with agricultural/rural EAS as well as human resources and gender issues within EAS context. EAS played a great role in Egypt’s agriculture development for many years. Extension system is currently in a transitional period and is moving towards decentralization of programming decisions and operations from one hand, and being involved in community development, not only agriculture focus, from another hand. EAS face great challenges i.e. lack of organizational and institutional coordination, decreasing number of extension workers, difficulty in convincing farmers to change their old and traditional agricultural practices. Agriculture extension has great potential in achieving sustainable rural development by providing the solutions to field-based problems, improving the income of rural families, enhancing agricultural productivity by increasing input use efficiency and, finally, paying special attention to rural women and youth. It is important to realize that farmers, rural families and rural communities are the ultimate target of EAS. Therefore, all the institutional arrangements for improving, activating and enhancing the mutual cooperation and collective work of the Agricultural Knowledge and Innovation System (AKIS) sub-systems must focus and over emphasize on the characteristics, problems and needs of extension sub-system.