The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) is releasing today a policy paper examining how Egypt’s new Future of Egypt law concentrates extensive powers over public assets and resources in an authority that answers directly to the President, and is not required to publish its financial statements or contracts.

Titled “Whose Future? Parallel Governance and the Redefinition of the State in the ‘Future of Egypt Authority’ Law,” the paper examines Law No. 147 of 2026, issued in July to reorganize the Future of Egypt Authority for Sustainable Development (FoE) after years of operating without a publicly available legal framework. The paper finds that the law makes FoE’s expanding role in managing public assets, land, natural resources and the food market permanent.

FoE began in 2017 as a project to cultivate 200,000 feddans in the Western Desert under the supervision of the Air Force. Over nine years, it expanded beyond land reclamation to become the leading importer of wheat for the state’s food subsidy program. It now manages the Commodity Exchange, oversees the country’s largest lakes and fish farms, and is one of the bodies controlling the distribution of subsidized fertilizers. Its investments extend into other sectors that affect Egyptians’ daily lives.

The law grants the authority financial, administrative and technical independence and allows it to take over assets and responsibilities previously held by various ministries and public bodies. It combines powers to set rules, allocate land, issue licenses, invest, operate projects, monitor compliance and impose penalties, making the authority a regulator, investor and overseer at once.

Yet the law requires neither financial and contractual disclosure nor a complete inventory of the land and assets the authority owns or manages.

Egypt’s political leadership has presented this expansion as evidence of FoE’s success, arguing that continued success requires exceptional flexibility to bypass bureaucratic constraints. But that flexibility has come through granting the authority land, financing and investment and licensing powers, rather than reforming the rules that hinder ministries and public bodies or giving those institutions the same tools.

The paper argues that the law marks a fundamental change in how the state is governed. Regular presidential monitoring of the authority’s projects, alongside President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi’s prominent role at its conferences and inaugurations, has helped present FoE as an alternative to existing institutions, drawing its power directly from the presidency.

By giving exceptional arrangements a permanent basis in law, the state has turned an agricultural project into a pillar of the political leadership’s “New Republic.” This shift redefines the state’s relationship with public assets, including who receives the revenue they generate and how much reaches citizens.

The paper also traces the consequences for ministries and public funds, the management of land, water and lakes, and the lives of farmers, fishers and consumers. It also examines the independent budgets of the authority and its two funds, and the exemptions and incentives granted to their projects and partners without publicly stated obligations to society in return.

It builds on EIPR’s earlier position paper, “A Blank Check for the Future of Egypt,” released before Parliament’s final vote on the law.

The paper calls for publication of a complete inventory of FoE’s assets and land, along with its contracts and financial statements. It also calls for public oversight of the authority’s resources, two funds and companies, and for separating its regulatory and oversight powers from its investment and operational activities.

It also calls for land and water allocations and exemptions granted to the authority and its partners to be tied to clear, public and measurable obligations toward farmers, fishers and consumers, as well as commitments to protect natural resources.

Read the Full policy paper here