The challenge

Egypt’s food trade has expanded rapidly, increasing the demand placed on the National Food Safety Authority to facilitate growing volumes of imports and exports while safeguarding consumers.

NFSA has already introduced important trade facilitation mechanisms, including its White List program, which is intended to provide simplified treatment to compliant food businesses. However, the benefits of the program are not always consistently applied in practice, and coordination with other border agencies remains limited.

Exporters also face delays and uncertainty when obtaining export health certificates. NFSA currently issues approximately 12,000–15,000 certificates each month, through a process that remains largely manual and can take several days. These delays create additional logistics costs, affect time-sensitive shipments, and make it harder for Egyptian businesses, particularly small and medium-sized enterprises, to compete in international markets.

 

What We Are Doing

The project will support NFSA and private sector partners through two complementary workstreams:

1) Modernising the White List program:

  • Assess how the existing program operates and identify implementation gaps.
  • Introduce clearer, performance-based categories and benefits for compliant businesses.
  • Improve coordination and information exchange between NFSA and other border agencies.
  • Pilot and gradually roll out the upgraded approach

2) Streamlining and digitalising export health certificates

  • Develop a simpler, more transparent, and standardised process.
  • Design and pilot a digital solution for electronic certificate applications, processing, issuance, and tracking, where feasible.

Throughout implementation, NFSA, Customs, food industry associations, exporters, and other stakeholders will work together to design, test, and refine practical solutions.

 

The Impact

The project aims to deliver:

  • Faster and more predictable clearance for compliant food businesses.
  • Reduced administrative and logistics costs for importers and exporters.
  • More consistent application of risk-based food safety controls.
  • Improved coordination between NFSA, Customs, and the private sector.

The project supports Egypt Vision 2030 and the government’s digital transformation agenda by modernising core government services, strengthening risk-based regulation and improving the efficiency of food trade.