Egypt’s Food Subsidy Cuts Turn Bread Into a Daily Struggle in Cairo

CAIRO — Outside a bakery in El-Marg, a working-class district of Cairo, Eman Abdel Fattah held a few crumpled banknotes and did the math. Since her family’s food subsidy card was suspended, the flatbread that anchors nearly every Egyptian meal costs her about 10 times as much as it did before July.

“We used to worry about having enough money for meat,” the 42-year-old mother of four told AFP, inching forward in the queue. “Now we worry about bread.”

It is the one item, she said, her family cannot do without.

Egypt’s subsidized bread has long been a political and social lifeline. But as the government pursues IMF-backed reforms, it is narrowing one of the world’s largest food subsidy programs. Since June, 850,000 people have been removed from the system, according to the supply ministry. Local media reports say millions more could be excluded next year.

Officials say only the “undeserving” will lose support. Yet the changes are unfolding in a country where repeated currency devaluations have wiped out savings and years of double-digit inflation have left most households living paycheck to paycheck. Before the economic crisis took hold in 2022, about a third of Egyptians—roughly 35 million people—lived below the poverty line, while another third hovered just above it. The government has not published updated poverty rates since, but it says about 66 million people rely on subsidized bread.

The fiscal stakes are enormous. Egypt’s food subsidies bill reached $3.2 billion last year. This year, interest on foreign debt is expected to cost more than $29 billion. For Cairo, trimming subsidies is a way to satisfy lenders and stabilize public finances. For families in neighborhoods like El-Marg, it is a daily test of survival.

Counting every pound—and every loaf

At bakeries and grocery stores across El-Marg, customers stand at the till mentally tallying costs. One woman held up the line as she frantically crossed items off her list. Her bill was still too high, so she cut more.

Several women told AFP they were eating less so their children would not have to. Siham Abdel Qawi, a 40-year-old homemaker, has given up fruit, animal protein and sweets.

“We’re constantly worried about making it to the end of the month,” she said.

Her freezer, once home to the occasional cut of meat, now holds little more than vegetables and ice trays. Chicken has become a twice-a-month treat. Rice is measured carefully.

Their experience is reflected in national data. Last year, about nine million Egyptians were undernourished, while more than 30 percent of the population suffered food insecurity, according to the United Nations.

Sacrifices mistaken for means

Abdel Qawi and Abdel Fattah both lost their family cards after enrolling a child in a bottom-tier private school. They said they were desperate for an alternative to Egypt’s overcrowded and underfunded public schools.

Both families now pool savings and borrow from relatives to cover tuition. In Abdel Fattah’s case, the annual fee is 8,000 Egyptian pounds, or about $160.

Schooling is one of several indicators used to determine eligibility, along with asset ownership, electricity bills and income. Former supply ministry official Hisham Kamel told AFP that private school fees “may reflect sacrifices the families are making, not comfortable financial means.”

The government says only elite international schools should trigger exclusion. But all five families interviewed by AFP said they were removed because their children attended private schools—even when tuition was as low as 10,000 pounds. The supply ministry did not respond to AFP’s request for comment.

Kressen Thyen, a political sociologist at Germany’s University of Kassel who studies subsidy schemes in the Middle East, said targeted welfare systems rarely “work perfectly.”

“Many vulnerable families are removed because of administrative errors and loopholes in the system,” she told AFP.

Kamel said bureaucratic mistakes might also mean that “some families own assets on paper that they have already sold.” Thousands have appealed the decision, according to a supply ministry spokesman, but most cannot manage the paperwork, travel and time required to contest it.

Bread’s political weight

The subsidy purge comes as Egyptians already confront a broader cost-of-living crisis. According to the urban research group 10 Tooba, average monthly rent in Cairo has risen to 10,500 pounds—far above the minimum wage of 7,000 pounds, which workers say is rarely enforced.

Few commodities carry the same emotional and political weight as bread. In 1977, riots forced the government to reverse planned subsidy cuts. More than three decades later, “bread, freedom and social justice” became a defining slogan of the 2011 uprising that toppled longtime President Hosni Mubarak.

With each wave of liberalization reform, the government had steered clear of subsidized bread—until 2024, when it raised the price from five to 20 piasters a loaf.

In January, the government is set to deliver another upheaval when it begins shifting the card system to direct cash assistance. Critics say inflation, now at 14.9 percent, will quickly erode the value of those payments, leaving the vast majority of Egyptians struggling to put food on the table.

For Abdel Fattah, the debate in Cairo feels far removed from the bakery queue. She is not asking for comfort. She is asking for enough bread.