Authorities in Egypt are facing a backlash from farmers and rural communities over steep increases in rent charged on state-administered charitable lands, at times as much as double or even triple the previous rates, across all provinces.
The move by the Ministry of Religious Endowments (Awqaf) has stoked debate over the government’s new, profit-driven approach to management of public assets once viewed as charitable trusts.
Until a decade ago, farmers leasing Awqaf land paid modest fees, with the most expensive plot reaching about 1,800 Egyptian pounds ($38) per feddan (about 0.42 hectares) annually.
However, rental rates varied widely based on location, soil quality and real estate laws, and sometimes on the conditions laid out in the donor's contract with the ministry.
The low rates underpinned thousands of long-standing tenancies. The fees rose slowly after 2013 following multiple lawsuits by the Awqaf Ministry, which wanted the rents to reflect inflation and repeated currency devaluations, to reach about 18,000 pounds ($378) per feddan for the most valuable holdings by last season.
Under the new valuations for the current agricultural year, which began in September, rates for top-tier plots have soared to as much as 55,000 pounds annually, with rates nationwide at least doubling.
The ministry has defended its decision, calling it an overdue effort to “make better use of our holdings”.
“We are often called the wealthiest ministry because people assume we own all this wealth that citizens have given over to charity. That isn’t true. We are merely administrators of that wealth and under obligation to invest it in the most profitable way,” ministry spokesman Osama Raslan said on a TV talk show on Monday.
Mr Raslan has been on a media charm offensive, aimed at calming a wave of public anger that culminated in the head of the farmers’ union appealing to Awqaf Minister Osama Al Azhari on Sunday to reverse or at least phase in the rent increases.
Mr Raslan said the new rates reflect differences in soil and water access.
“There are plots in the [Nile] Delta whose price has increased to 55,000 pounds annually, but there are also some in Upper Egypt where the highest rate after the hikes is 18,000 pounds, raised from just over 9,000 pounds. There are many areas where rent rates remain within reach for those who cannot afford the more expensive plots,” he said.
New leadership, higher rates
The overhaul follows an internal reorganisation of the ministry completed under Mr Al Azhari, who himself was appointed in a Cabinet reshuffle last year. Mr Al Azhari brought in new leadership, including investment specialist Dr Khaled El Tayeb, who Mr Raslan described on Monday as “well-versed in what a profit cycle means and how to benefit most from our existing holdings”.
The ministry’s new strategy aims to treat thousands of endowment assets less as charitable properties and more as income-generating ventures.
Before these reforms, Awqaf lands were leased at largely uniform, subsidised rates that bore little relation to their market value.
The new pricing system bases rents on location, water access and productivity, introducing private-sector logic into an institution traditionally embodying religious charity.
The Awqaf’s total managed wealth – valued at about $22 billion in 2018 – includes about 256,000 feddans (106,000 hectares) of farmland and 120,000 real estate units, ranging from residential and administrative buildings to commercial investments.
For decades, Egyptians perceived the ministry’s land holdings as endowments for the people's benefit, but the state’s shift towards efficiency and profitability has stirred unease over what charity means in today’s Egypt.
'God’s money'
Hussein Abu Saddam, head of the national Farmers’ Union, said raising rents was “a decision based on inaccurate information that created public anger and burdens farmers instead of helping them”.
“The endowments are God’s money, and it is a trust that should lighten people’s hardships, not add to them,” he said.
Mr Abu Saddam argued that the whole point of the Awqaf was to protect the needy from market forces, and that equating rents for Awqaf land with private land “is not justice” because some private owners exploit tenants’ need for land.
“Farmers of Awqaf lands have improved these plots for years, unlike others who rent fertile soil ready for planting,” he said.
He urged the authorities to cap rents at about 25,000 pounds per feddan, a figure he considers the upper limit of fairness.
The ministry on Friday defended its policy as a requirement of good governance.
“The endowment is God’s property, and the trust is bound on the ministry to manage it with the highest professionalism,” it said.
The ministry said that a committee of agricultural specialists found deep irregularities in contract values that “led to waste of endowment wealth and failure of responsibility”, prompting corrective action.
The new system, it said, divides lands into four quality categories – excellent, good, medium and weak – based on inspections and consultations across provinces.
It pledged “fairness between tenants’ needs and responsible management of endowments”, and said that smallholders cultivating fragmented plots would be treated leniently.
Decades of mistrust
Many rural Egyptians remain unconvinced. Land broker Alaa El Sayed, who works across the provinces of Beheira and Menoufia in the Nile Delta, said there was “significant fear among thousands of farmers who may be forced to relocate entire families from plots they’ve worked for decades”.
He said the sense of crisis has been heightened by the fact that operating costs are already very high for most farmers.
“For people living in these areas, it feels as though their lives are changing very quickly and they can’t keep up. Costs of living, fertiliser, power and water have all exploded, and now rent is doing the same.”
Both Mr El Sayed and another land broker based in Sharqiya province, Mahmoud Amer, said the conflict has exposed long-standing distrust between the farmers and the Awqaf Ministry.
Mr Amer said that many tenants used to lease large tracts at heavily reduced endowment rates and then sublet them informally to smaller farmers at market prices, pocketing the difference, which the ministry discovered in its most recent census.
“Some people became landlords under the ministry’s nose,” Mr Amer said. The result, he added, was mutual cynicism as farmers questioned the ministry’s integrity and officials suspected exploitation.
“Most of these farmers grew up repairing the village mosque themselves because Awqaf officials neglected them,” he explained. “Everyone has a story about an Awqaf official who emptied the mosque's donation box into his pocket while locals struggled. So there’s distrust on both sides.”
Mr Amer acknowledged that some prosperous tenants could afford the new rates, particularly for prime Delta land.
“Some of them even admit the plots are worth more than they were paying,” he said. “But everyone agrees that doubling or tripling rent overnight is unreasonable. The least the ministry can do is gradually raise prices, or handle it case by case.”
The strain also reflects the ambiguity at the heart of the Awqaf system: although the ministry is legally the custodian of charitable endowments, its increasingly commercial approach blurs the line between moral obligation and state enterprise.
Some MPs representing rural constituencies have pledged to raise the issue in parliament, saying that any adjustments should be made gradually and with safeguards for poorer tenants.
The dispute is emblematic of a broader policy shift towards commercialising state assets, even those rooted in charity or religion, as Egypt seeks revenue amid fiscal strain. However, for thousands of families on endowment land, the argument over whether “God’s land” should yield market profits is more than a policy debate; it is a question of survival.
