Poverty is great obstacle towards achieving sustainable development and economic growth, and threatens political and social stability and security. Poverty doesn’t mean only lack of necessities to fulfill individuals’ welfare, but deprivation from opportunities and choices. Though, previous governments-prior to 25th of January revolution embarked a program aiming poor people through an integrated bunch of developmental projects to improve poor people’s quality of life. This program consists of two main parts: first the main development program targeting 1000 poorest villages (according to the economic development ministry, 2008) and second part the integrated development program which targets 151 villages. In order to enhance the governmental initiative and improve the agriculture sector in Egypt, the current study aims at identifying the conditions of these poor communities via targeting two main and important categories which are agricultural laborers and farmers either tenants or renters of the agricultural lands from gender perspectives, besides identify- ing their problems and suggestions to overcome these problems and their relationship with the relevant agricultural institutions and private sector, and finally their suggested policies to enhance and attract investments to the agriculture sector in Egypt, which will eventually lead to application of more convenient measurements and policies to improve poor people’s livelihoods. The study’s results revealed the rooted poverty especially among agricultural laborers either male or female, but mostly among females, as most of them lack skills, and not gathered in one entity, besides low wages and seasonality of the agriculture work. Therefore most of them are willing to shift to other work opportunities. As for farmers, they suffer from many problems such as high agricultural input prices, soil deterioration, irrigation problems, and deteriorated drainage networks and finally lack of agriculture extension services. In light of the previous results, if no serious measurements and actions taken by the government and relevant stakeholders to improve the agriculture system as a whole, and improve laborers capabilities, solving irrigation and drainage problems, and accessing markets, then we will lose our capabilities to face the accelerating challenges and imbalance in our food security and moreover trapped in the vicious poverty cycle.

Poverty represents one of the development challenges that faces the developing countries in general and Egypt in particular. Though poverty alleviation came on the top priorities of the third millennium goals, as in 2002 about 20.4% of Egyptian people were suffering from objective (absolute) poverty which means that about 13.7 million people are unable to fulfill their basic needs and about 31.8% suffer from subjective poverty. Poverty risk looks ostensibly equal between men and women, but women in general and female headed households suffer more. Therefore small-scale enterprises are one of the mechanisms that lead to poverty alleviation especially among females. This requires coordination among all relevant stakeholders governmental and non- governmental, besides to reform the financial sector and stimulate it to deal with local and financial needs of small-scale enterprises, and to facilitate poor people’s access to appropriate financial services. In light of the previous review, the current study aims at describing poverty status in Egypt and the system that incubate small-scale enterprises and stakeholders as well as beneficiaries and rural women in particular. The study depended on review of literature and secondary data and case studies that reflects one of the civil society organizations experience working in development through providing small-scale enterprises for poor people in rural areas. The case studies covers three governorates: Fayoum, Beni-suef and Menia with a total number of 20 case studies who received livestock production projects with no interest rate, aiming at identifying the problems and solutions to improve the performance of small-scale enterprise providers as well as beneficiaries. The results revealed that successful stories can be attributed to the strong will of beneficiaries to improve their livelihoods, besides the role of the organization in collaborating with local leaderships within the villages, which helped to identify and monitor those beneficiaries. Based on contracting between the provider and beneficiaries to guarantee rights and obligations of both partners, also providing training and follow-up and evaluation played great role in the success of the projects and its sustainability. As for the failures, it was related to poor capabilities of the beneficiaries (widowers) who were affected by various challenges one of which is socialization, lack of skills and health problems.

The current period has seen considerable interest in issues of poverty in the world. And every State can draw the correct and appropriate policies to combat poverty if it can identify the most important determinants (causes) of poverty and know how to evaluate these parameters in line with its potential. Therefore, this research tries to contribute to identifying the determinants of poverty in Egypt and most Arabian countries. For this was the problem of searching high unemployment and low level of services and lack of availability of a significant sector of the population of Egypt and most Arabian countries. The objective of this search is to try to identify the most important determinants of poverty in Arabian countries and the estimate the proportion of a specific effect of each of these determinants in the presence of differences in the incidence of poverty among them, and the possibilities of reducing poverty in these countries. Deliberately search to include the study of all the Arab states, including oil and non-oil. The study estimated poverty function by using some of the World Development Indicators contained in the report of the World Bank for the years 2007/2008, 2000/2001, the indicators are: proportion of population below national poverty line (dependent variable), and many of other indicators, which is believed it may affect the incidence of poverty in any country (independent variables), The study used cross-sectional time series data and the double logarithmic ordinary least squares OLS were used. The results of statistical analysis of the determinants of poverty is clear that the lack of services and facilities of state is the biggest factor influencing the increase in poverty in Arab countries. For Egypt, it was shown that the rate of poverty in Egypt more than their counterparts in the record level assumed by 13.58%, and approximately 8.20% of this difference in the poverty rate between Egypt and the standard record is due in the first place low ratio of value-added of industry from GDP, hence the clear trend State to pursue a policy focus on industry and trying to promote this sector so that the State of employment in this sector and thereby reduce unemployment and reduce poverty as well as state and to attract surplus labor and underemployment, seasonal in the agriculture sector, and should also increase the share of spending on education budget to combat poverty. The study then proceeded to try to reduce the poverty rate of study and upon which it became clear that the first solution, and fast to reduce poverty in less Arab countries is to try to influence countries to boost spending on education (% of GDP) and value added of industry (% of GDP). As for ways to reduce the poverty rate in poor Arab countries explained the study, said the first solution, and fast to reduce poverty is to raise the foreign direct investment (U.S. $ million) (% of GDP) and expenditure on education (% of GDP). It is also for ways to reduce the poverty rate of the