The Siwa Sustainable Development Initiative and environmental investment in Egypt

SIWA

Environmental Quality International in SIWA

Egypt has long been seen as a place rich in tradition and culture. With specific respect to Siwa, a region in the country, this was very much true when it was discovered by an investor in 1995, who described it as untouched by time.

Despite its recent rocky revolution, Egypt has strived to place itself in a position to be a model not just for Africa, but for the whole of the Arab World, and has done so by promoting freedoms and encouraging foreign investment through various liberal policies. This has helped alleviate the country's employment problem, but much remains to be done, and not all reforms have been wholly positive. The paragraphs below will focus further on the Siwa region, and the specific project which it entails, and will discuss the objectives of the project introduced here, as well as pertinent issues and how they have and will affect the country.

Project Objective and Scope: A Description

The Siwa Sustainable Development Initiative was constructed in an effort to enable private investment to develop a sustainable development environment in the Siwa region, as described above. According to reports, Environmental Quality International (EQI), the principal investor, brought about both technical expertise and practical experience to ensure the development of the region, especially the utilization of its rich natural resources and unique cultural heritage.

The Siwa project thus began on a basis of helping a company help a country. The scope was simply to develop a part of Egypt that had been untouched for generations by the hand of industry. Prior to investing in this part of the country, however, the company completed a study of the country and it was found that Egypt, in fact, was counted number one among those countries introducing investor-friendly policies. This was simply another incentive for EQI to being its project.

Stakeholders and Issues

Siwa had, as mentioned above, been left untouched, and for this reason, it had little infrastructure. It was, at first, difficult to carry supplies to and from the site, for instance. Yet EQI planned to create a variety of projects that would revitalize the oasis' resources and that it would market towards establishing a good flow of tourism. Thus, in this case the stakeholders were not only the company investing, but also the people whose lives were being drastically altered by these investors. Though change was not always welcomed, the project would provide the local population with jobs, and EQI further planned on utilizing local materials as well, when possible.

In order to minimize its impact on the culture of the region, EQI decided to preserve heritage and not allow the development to come at the expense of traditional life. In fact, EQI planned to show that was possible to preserve the past while alleviating poverty and building a future. Though the company faced challenges (i.e. most men working were men), it was able to overcome these and establish a well-functioning economy in the region, thereby leading the Siwa case to be recognized as a success story.