Egypt Between Government Slogans and Bitter Reality
The Full Truth About Poverty and Capitalist Policies
Al-Ahram Gate reported on Tuesday, November 4, 2025, that the Egyptian Prime Minister, in a speech delivered on behalf of the President at the Second World Summit for Social Development in Doha, Qatar, said that Egypt is implementing a comprehensive approach to eliminate poverty in all its forms and dimensions, including "multidimensional poverty."
For years, official speeches in Egypt have rarely been devoid of phrases such as "a comprehensive approach to eliminating poverty" and "the real launch of the Egyptian economy." Officials repeat these slogans at conferences and events, accompanied by glossy images of investment projects, hotels, and resorts. But the reality, as evidenced by international reports, is quite different. Poverty in Egypt remains a deeply rooted, and even worsening, phenomenon, despite repeated government promises of improvement and renaissance.
According to reports by UNICEF, ESCWA, and the World Food Programme for 2024 and 2025, about one in five Egyptians lives in multidimensional poverty, meaning they are deprived of more than one aspect of basic life, such as education, health, housing, work, and services. The data also confirms that more than 49% of families suffer from difficulties in obtaining sufficient food, a shocking figure that reflects the depth of the living crisis.
As for financial poverty, i.e., low income compared to the costs of living, it has risen sharply as a result of successive waves of inflation that have eroded people's wages, efforts, and savings, until a large percentage of Egyptians are below the financial poverty line despite their constant work.
While the government talks about initiatives such as "Takaful and Karama" and "Decent Life," international figures reveal that these programs have not radically changed the structure of poverty, but have been limited to temporary palliatives similar to a drop poured into the desert. The Egyptian countryside, where more than half of the population lives, still suffers from poor services, a lack of decent job opportunities, and dilapidated infrastructure. The ESCWA report confirms that deprivation in the countryside is several times greater than in the cities, which indicates poor distribution of wealth and chronic neglect of the peripheries.
When the Prime Minister thanks the citizen "who has endured with the government the measures of economic reform," he is in fact acknowledging the existence of real suffering resulting from these policies. However, this acknowledgment is not followed by a change in approach, but rather a continuation on the same capitalist path that caused the crisis.
The alleged reform that began in 2016 with the "floatation" program, raising subsidies, and increasing taxes, was not a reform but rather a burdening of the poor with the cost of debts and deficits. At a time when officials are talking about "the launch," huge investments are going to luxury real estate and tourism projects that serve the owners of capital, while millions of young people find no opportunities for work or housing. Indeed, many of these projects, such as the Alam El Roum area in Matrouh, whose investments are estimated at $29 billion, are foreign capitalist partnerships that acquire land and wealth and turn them into a source of profit for investors, not a source of livelihood for the people.
The regime fails not only because it is corrupt, but because it follows a false intellectual basis, which is the capitalist system, which makes money the focus of all state policies. Capitalism is based on absolute freedom of ownership, and allows the accumulation of wealth in the hands of the few who own the means of production, while the many bear the burden of taxes, prices, and public debt.
Therefore, all so-called "social protection programs" are merely an attempt to beautify the brutal face of capitalism, and to prolong the life of an unjust system that takes into account the rich and collects from the poor. Instead of addressing the root of the disease; i.e., the monopoly of wealth and the dependence of the economy on international institutions, it is sufficient to distribute crumbs of cash aid, which do not alleviate poverty or preserve dignity.
Care is not a favor from the ruler to the ruled, but a legitimate duty, and a responsibility for which God will hold him accountable in this world and the hereafter. What is happening today is a deliberate neglect of people's affairs, and an abandonment of the duty of care in favor of conditional loans from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.
The state has become an intermediary between the poor and the foreign creditor, imposing taxes, reducing subsidies, and selling public property to cover a swollen deficit created by the capitalist system itself. In all of this, the legitimate concepts that regulate the economy are absent, such as the prohibition of usury, the prevention of the ownership of public wealth by individuals, and the obligation to spend on the people from the treasury of the Muslims.
Islam has presented an integrated economic system that addresses poverty at its roots, not just with cash support or cosmetic projects. This system is based on fixed legitimate foundations, the most prominent of which are:
1- Prohibiting usury and usurious debts that shackle the state and drain its resources. By eliminating usury, the dependence of the economy on international institutions will disappear, and the financial sovereignty of the nation will be restored.
2- Making ownership three types:
Individual ownership: such as houses, shops, and private farms...
Public ownership: includes major wealth such as oil, gas, minerals, and water...
State ownership: such as fay' lands, rikaz, and kharaj...
With this distribution, justice is achieved, as a small group is prevented from monopolizing the nation's resources.
3- Guaranteeing sufficiency for every individual of the people: The state guarantees for every person in its care their basic needs of food, clothing, and housing. If they are unable to work, the treasury must spend on them.
4- Zakat and mandatory spending: Zakat is not a charity, but an obligation, collected by the state and spent in its legitimate channels for the poor, the needy, and the debtors. It is an effective distribution tool that returns money to the cycle of life in society.
Along with stimulating productive work and preventing exploitation, and urging investment of resources in real beneficial projects such as heavy and military industries, not in speculation, luxury real estate and fictitious projects. In addition to adjusting prices with real supply and demand, not with monopoly or floatation.
The Khilafah state on the method of Prophethood is the only one capable of applying these provisions practically, because it is built on the basis of Islamic creed, and its goal is to care for people's affairs, not to collect their money. Under the Khilafah, there is no usury or conditional loans, and no sale of public wealth to foreigners, but resources are managed in a way that achieves the interest of the nation, and the treasury finances health care, education, and public facilities from state resources, kharaj, anfal, and public property.
As for the poor, their basic needs are guaranteed individually, not through temporary charity but as a guaranteed legitimate right. Therefore, fighting poverty in Islam is not a political slogan, but an integrated system of life that establishes justice, prevents injustice, and returns wealth to its people.
Between the official discourse and the lived reality is a huge distance that is not hidden from anyone. While the government boasts of its "giant" projects and the "real launch," millions of Egyptians live below the poverty line, suffering from high prices, unemployment, and a lack of hope. The truth is that this suffering will not disappear as long as Egypt continues on the path of capitalism, surrendering its economy to usurers and submitting to the policies of international institutions.
The crises and problems of Egypt are human problems and not material ones, and they relate to legitimate rulings that show how to deal with them and treat them on the basis of Islam, and the solutions are easier than turning a blind eye, but they need a sincere administration that has a free will that wants to walk in the right path and truly wants good for Egypt and its people, and then this administration must review all the contracts that were previously concluded and that are concluded with all the companies that monopolize the assets of the country and what is of its public ownership, and at the forefront are companies exploring for gas, oil, gold and the rest of the minerals and wealth, and expel all those companies because they are originally colonial companies plundering the wealth of the country, then formulate a new covenant based on enabling people to access the country's wealth and establishing or leasing companies that are based on producing wealth from the sources of oil, gas, gold and other minerals and redistribute these wealth to the people again, then people will be able to cultivate the dead land that the state will enable them to exploit with their right in it, and they will also be able to manufacture what must be manufactured to raise the economy of Egypt and suffice its people, and the state will support them in this way, and all this is not a figment of the imagination or impossible to happen or a project that we present for experimentation that may succeed or fail, but it is legitimate rulings that are necessary and binding on the state and the people, so the state may not give up the wealth of the country that is owned by the people under the pretext of contracts approved and supported by unjust international laws, and it may not prevent people from it, but it must cut off every hand that extends plundering to the wealth of the people, this is what Islam offers and must be implemented, but it is not applied in isolation from the rest of the systems of Islam, but it is only applied through the Rashidun Khilafah state on the method of Prophethood, this state whose concern and call for is carried by Hizb ut-Tahrir and calls on Egypt and its people, people and army, to work with it for its sake, may God write the conquest from Him, so we see it a reality that honors Islam and its people, O God, sooner rather than later.
﴿If the people of the towns had but believed and been righteous, We would have opened for them blessings from heaven and earth.﴾
Written for the Central Media Office of Hizb ut-Tahrir
Saeed Fadl
Member of the Media Office of Hizb ut-Tahrir in the Wilayah of Egypt
