Egypt and the UK on Friday discussed cooperation in topics such as health, education, communications, information technology, digitalization and small and medium-sized companies in addition to women’s empowerment, vocational training and agricultural value chains.
This came during a meeting between Egyptian Minister of International Cooperation Rania al-Mashat with the UK’s Minister of State Foreign Commonwealth and Development Affairs Lord Tariq Ahmad of Wimbledon.
A statement from the International Cooperation Ministry said that the meeting discussed Egypt’s economic reform, COP27, and how the UK and Egypt can work closer together for both countries.
Mashat highlighted Egypt’s desire to deepen relations with the UK through triangular cooperation and South-South cooperation, which is essential to present good practices in climate technology for Africa.
She underscored the value of the bilateral economic partnership between Egypt and the UK, which is reflected in the positive results that have had an impact on Egypt’s economy.
Mashat added that the UK has renewed its strong cooperation with Egypt by providing various forms of technical and economic support, such as funding agricultural value chains projects, along with providing technical support for the central administration of public-private partnerships at the Finance Ministry.
She also touched on a framework of cooperation with the UK through the Climate Finance Accelerator (CFA), in which the UK is working helping to identify challenges and blockages that prevent finance from flowing at the volume and speed required to have a meaningful impact on their climate ambitions.
Egypt is scheduled to take part in building capacities and identifying projects, which will be discussed and presented to obtain the country’s required financing needs.
According to Mashat, Egypt pursues a win-win approach in all partnerships, as it aims to achieve complementary desires and share Egypt’s experience in development financing to other countries through South-South and triangular cooperation.
These partnerships are reflected in the 2021 Annual report launched by the ministry, “Engaging for Impact Towards Our Common Future”, which is based on the inclusive-green-digital nexus. Total funding from multilateral and bilateral development partners in 2021 amounted to $20 billion over the two years, despite the circumstances imposed by the pandemic.
A joint statement was issued to strengthen economic cooperation between the two countries in 2020 within the activities of the British-African Investment Summit.
The UK had expressed its willingness to strengthen bilateral and multilateral partnerships with development partners, governments, policy makers, the private sector and civil society to achieve sustainable development.
