Is Egypt leaving no one behind? Tracing Egypt’s progress in SDG indicators

Urban Design and Planning Department, Faculty of Engineering, Ain Shams University, Cairo, Egypt

^* Corresponding author: hebaghalib@eng.asu.edu.eg

Abstract

The Sustainable Development Goals SDGs are the latest of a series of global attempts by the United Nations to persuade nations around the globe to work towards a more sustainable future. In 2019, the Egyptian ministry for planning and economic development signed a partnership with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) to create a series of reports on Sustainable Development Goals SDGs localization in Egypt. The series consists of a report for each of the 27 governorates covering the progress in SDG indicators. Each report identifies SDGs indicators and their targets tailored according to the governorate’s conditions. This paper traces the progress in these indicators with special focus on Egypt’s governorates with the largest vulnerable populations namely El-Menya, Sohag and Assiut governorates in Upper Egypt. The results show that the rate of progress varies across governorates and indicators. A notable remark is that not all seventeen SDGs are included in the report. The report discusses only eleven of the SDGs while disregarding the remaining six i.e. goals 9,10, 12, 13,14, 15. This in itself can be an indicator of the need for more progress in these areas specifically. Moreover, in the goals discussed in the report not all the indicators proposed by the UN are introduced and reported. The paper shows that Egypt’s most vulnerable governorates are working on achieving the SDGs but still have a long way to go.