Egypt is expected to dramatically transform in the coming decades. In a business as usual scenario, the Egypt population is expected to reach 150 million by 2050, from about 91 million today, and the size of the economy to more than quadruple. Egypt Sustainable Development Strategy: Vision 2030 – linking the present to the future – “represents a foothold on the way towards inclusive development” and aims to ensure the coming transformations of society will be inclusive and sustainable.

The livestock sector is anticipated to play a key role in achieving Vision 2030. The Egypt Sustainable Agricultural Development Strategy Towards 2030 reads “increasing per capita animal protein consumption by 4g/day by the year 2030 is one of the main objectives of developing animal, poultry and fisheries production, and reconstituting the animal food basket … in favour of the least-costly local sources”. The Strategy envisages investments to increase beef cattle, milk and poultry production and productivity to satisfy the growing demand of animal source foods while reducing imports. However, the anticipated growth and transformation of the livestock sector not only will increase the availability of affordably-priced animal protein for the population, but might also result in negative public health, environmental and social outcomes.

The Egypt Ministry of Agriculture and Land Reclamation, the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Environment, the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics and the FAO Africa Sustainable Livestock 2050 Initiative have joined forces to generate evidence that supports a sustainable development of livestock in the long-term. A National Steering Committee, comprising representatives of the partnering institutions, leads a multi-disciplinary and multi-stakeholder process to:

• Characterize of current livestock production systems and generate evidence on their impact on public health, the environment and livelihoods.
• Formulate of long-term (2050) scenarios to characterize future livestock production systems and anticipate emerging opportunities and challenges for Egyptian society.
• Identify actionable policy reforms to implement today that, by complementing current policies and strategies, enhance the country capacity to cope with the possible emergence and spread of zoonotic diseases and antimicrobial resistance; to deal with the potential negative impact of livestock on the environment and climate change; and to improve the livelihoods and food security of the future generations.