| Overview : Egypt, like many other countries was hit by the COVID-19 crisis, causing severe impact on the socioeconomic situation. The crisis interrupted a remarkable improvement in Egypt’s economic performance following the implementation of recent stabilization and reform efforts supported by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). As an immediate response to the crisis and in order to prevent the pandemic from spreading rapidly across the whole of society, the Government of Egypt (GoE) took urgent measures to resolve risks and impacts of COVID-19.
While the crisis imposes many challenges, it also presents a unique opportunity to re-evaluate traditional business modalities, and explore more sustainable, inclusive, and thus more resilient frameworks, moving forward. For example, an opportunity exists to build on Egypt’s remarkable progress in recent years in expanding digitalization of services, transactions, payments and marketing, with economic recovery of MSMEs hinging in many ways on a rapid and successful digital transition.
The next phase of UNDP’s COVID-19 crisis response is designed to help decision-makers look beyond recovery, towards 2030, making choices and managing complexity and uncertainty in four main
areas: governance, social protection, green economy, and digital disruption. Governments and societies face unprecedented policy, regulatory and fiscal choices as they act to save lives and set a course for a sustainable future. The choices made today, if made well, could be the tipping points that transform our societies and our planet for the better. UNDP has identified seven such tipping points offer a pathway beyond recovery, towards 2030 – to turn the greatest reversal of human development into an historic leap forward, with the Sustainable Development Goals as the compass.
Strategic foresight has been pushed to the heart of government policy making post COVID-19, due to its importance in supporting governments in making strategic choices and in designing better policy alternatives in rapidly changing contexts. Covid-19 has certainly created many challenges, but it has also opened up a space to think differently and imagine alternative possibilities for the future.
Getting ahead of the next phase of the COVID crisis mandates increasing dependence on forward-looking intelligence, scenario building, and identification of options and alternatives that span multiple horizons (both immediate, short, medium and into the next normal) to stay ahead of uncertainty. It also mandates increasing dependence on the capacities of a “plan ahead” team that are capable of developing the scenarios, recommendations, policy alternatives and tipping points that support policy makers make the best fit decisions.
The Ministry of Planning and Economic Development (MoPED) plays a pivotal role in supporting the GoE to build back better and take the needed policy decisions in light of the uncertainty imposed by COVID-19. Accordingly, the UNDP is seeking to support MoPED in capacitating a team of senior officials to operate as a plan ahead team, and to provide the needed decision-making support using novel foresight methods that can be easily replicated across different sectors or policy issues. |
