by Marwa Yahya
CAIRO, March 7 (Xinhua) -- Egypt's newly-launched project to rein in birthrates offers a "historic opportunity" to address the country's overpopulation issue, said an Egyptian population expert.
"The launch of the National Project for Developing the Egyptian Family (NPDEF) is a historic opportunity to address the population increase, an issue that Egypt had started to tackle since 1965 via establishing the Supreme Council for Family Planning," Amr Hassan, a population expert told Xinhua.
Hassan, former secretary-general of the National Council for Population, noted that six decades is a very long time for tackling the overpopulation issue.
Egypt's population is nearly 103 million with 2.5 million newborns in 2021, according to the country's statistics agency's report in January.
The report expected that Egypt's population will reach 124 million by 2032 at the current growth rate of 2.9 children per family.
Egypt has the largest population among Arab countries, the third largest among the African countries, and the fourteenth globally, the report said.
The NPDEF is a comprehensive development project, not just focusing on boosting family planning and the health sector but covering five pillars, including the economic empowerment of women.
It is also a project targeting the family as a whole and not just individuals, different from all previous initiatives that targeted women only, Hassan said.
"The NPDEF will provide financial incentives and rewards for the first time for the committed families," said the expert.
Hassan expected success of the new initiative because the tools are available, including the political will, institutional framework, and clear strategy, plan and funding.
He said that the population could be a strength of Egypt when it is not posing a burden on the state's ability to provide basic services with quality. Yet the overpopulation in Egypt affects the average per capita share of natural resources, especially water and energy, and hinders the national economy, human development and employment rates.
According to the Minister of Planning and Economic Development Hala El-Saeed, Egypt has spent 400 billion U.S. dollars to improve the citizens' quality of life via many initiatives over the past seven years.
"The key objective of 2030 vision is to improve the people's quality of life," said El-Saeed. ■