Dr Reham Rizk: Speaking truth to power to tackle poverty in Egypt

It is never easy to speak truth to power. But that is the job of Dr Reham Rizk, director of the Egypt Impact Lab, an innovative initiative that works to strengthen poverty reduction policies through research and rigorous evaluation of government programmes. The scale of the lab, and its position in the heart of government, make it unusual and influential. 

“It’s a miracle in Egypt to have this marriage between policy-makers and research people,” said Rizk. 

Certainly, the Egypt Impact Lab is an example of governance best practice that could be of interest to many countries in the European neighbourhood and beyond. 

Egypt Impact Lab is a collaboration between the Ministry of Planning and Economic Development – the “ministry of ministries”, as Rizk puts it – and the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab Middle East and North Africa,  J-PAL MENA. It is part of the J-PAL global research centre that works to reduce poverty by ensuring policy is informed by scientific evidence. 

Governments don’t like being told that their programmes have failed, so persuading the Egyptian government to set up a lab in its heart to measure the impacts of policies, is an achievement. But the government is making major investments in improving people’s lives, and in developing countries it is critical not to waste resources as the poor are in deep need.  

“So there’s an appetite in government entities to ensure the effectiveness of public investment in employment income generation, social protection and poverty reduction that can be backed by evidence,” Rizk said. “It is a top priority to find the most effective and cost-effective programmes to pilot and scale.”  

Making a difference 

Formerly, Rizk was head of the Modelling and Social Planning and Development Unit in the Ministry of Planning and Economic Development, which she joined in 2020. The Egypt Impact Lab was launched in 2022. Perhaps being embedded in government makes all the difference, when trying to achieve research impact. Certainly, it is unusual. 

“This is a government think-tank that is independent.”  

“My work focuses on establishing sustainable partnerships between universities, government entities, and development practitioners.” 

The Egypt Impact Lab works in the government priority areas of social protection and poverty alleviation; employment and small business development; gender empowerment and family development; and environment, energy and climate change. 

Rizk said she owes a lot to the European Training Foundation (ETF). 

“I like the efforts that the ETF is putting into Egypt.” 

Rizk started out as an academic, and the lab grew out of her frustration that researchers’ policy recommendations and insights were going nowhere. Also: 

“Research is a bit disconnected in Egypt. That’s why I created this initiative between J-PAL MENA, a global research think-tank located at MIT in the United States, and the ministry.” 

In 2019, J-PAL co-founders achieved the Nobel Prize in Economics for their groundbreaking approach to alleviating global poverty. Working with J-PAL and its network of 900+ leading researchers worldwide, helps to elevate the work of the Egypt Impact Lab to the cutting edge of poverty alleviation policy. 

Rizk and the Egypt Impact Lab – High achievers 

Heading up the Egypt Impact Lab is a big job, especially for a young person. Yet Rizk wears many hats, flowing from her impressive academic background. 

Rizk is an associate professor of economics for the University of London at the European Universities in Egypt, and in the master’s programme at Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University.  She is also an invited researcher at J-PAL MENA at the American University in Cairo, and a research fellow at the Economic Research Forum.  

Since Rizk earned her PhD, she has produced 11 papers, 16 working papers and three book chapters, and won multiple grants and fellowships. 

“I love my country and I have a passion for what I’m doing. I’ve tried my best to connect the dots and make sure that when we work on a project, it achieves its intended outcomes – that the public investment has been allocated efficiently." 

“The question that is really very common and that our government champions, is which programmes work and which are also cost-effective, given the limited fiscal space that we have faced, especially since COVID 19. All countries are affected by such global challenges.” 

The economy and the labour market 

Poverty alleviation through jobs is an urgent priority. Research by Rizk has highlighted two primary features of the labour market in the Middle East and North Africa: high unemployment rates, especially among young people and women; and multiple labour market rigidities. She has looked in particular at three countries: Egypt, Tunisia and Jordan. 

Interestingly, Tunisia and Egypt are very similar regarding the spread of informal jobs, with most people working outside the formal sector. In Egypt, a very small portion of the wage share of employment is in the formal private sector. The share of non-wage work outside the established economy is the main source of employment for both Egypt and Tunisia. 

Regarding education and the labour market, vocational graduates have fewer opportunities than university graduates, and are more likely to work in the informal sector. 

Unemployment among women is chronic. Women are unlikely to be engaged in informal wage employment due to the widespread misperception – one of what Rizk calls “stigmas” – that it is not safe. By contrast, women with post-secondary education are over-represented in the public sector. 

Both the private and public sectors have become incapable of providing more jobs, and there is a damaging mismatch between labour demand and supply. 

Active labour market policies 

The literature shows that active labour market policies (ALMPs) do not always work. But in terms of employment training, the evidence from Egypt tells a different story: if ALMPs are well designed and implemented, and tailored to meet labour market needs, they might have an important impact on labour market outcomes. This has also been the case in Jordan and Türkiye. 

“The effectiveness of ALMPs depends on the context, the target population, the type of training, the efficiency of the training, and also the quality of the workers.” 

There should always be an assessment to ensure that the skills being provided are appealing to the labour market.

For example, in Upper Egypt governorates, market research found a very high demand for nurses. Some would-be nurses received vocational training, some were also given on-the-job training, and others also received counselling. This study had positive results, particularly for women.  

“When you tailor the employment training to market needs, you’re going to have a positive impact,” Rizk said. 

Another good example is the Emergency Employment Investment Project (EEIP), a World Bank-funded project with the government undertaken by NGOs with 732 unemployed young people. 

EEIP activities included a three-day business training and industry-specific vocational training for six to seventeen days; self-employment training and funding support to start a business; four days of soft skills training, one to six weeks of on-the-job training; and job matching assistance. 

This ALMP had a “very positive” impact, with increased employment, working hours and income. Employment grew by 12 percentage points, particularly among women. Only the counselling flopped. 

“This programme has also given evidence that you can work well with NGOs in different settings.”   

Some concluding thoughts 

The Egypt Impact Lab has worked to institutionalise itself in government. 

“We have a decree that we are institutionalised and we expand our work in a way that ensures its long-term sustainability and effectiveness,” Rizk said. “The lab also works on seeding a culture of evidence-based policies.” 

It has three pillars that support the government to institutionalise the use of evidence: generating evidence on priority themes through research and evaluation; building capacity to use evidence through training; and strengthening the research ecosystem by integrating scholars in evaluations. 

The Egypt Impact Lab is not one of a kind, there are similar initiatives underway in some countries, and the lab is linked to other impact labs through the J-PAL network. 

“We have learned a lot from the J-PAL labs,” said Rizk. “But the Egypt Impact Lab is larger when it comes to the scope.”