Thursday, March 15, 2007

Aid metamorphosis

"With a diverse range of development projects that span nearly the whole of Egypt, the USAID programme aims to launch projects that can sustain themselves in the long run without USAID's help, according to the ambassador. "Our assistance is not intended to last forever, we don't wish to create dependency," Ricciardone told Al-Ahram Weekly. "We want to help make the Egyptian economy so strong that it can sustain itself without foreign assistance, and work in a natural way to attract investment."
A recent trend in the aid programme, which was unheard of a decade ago, is the conservation of ancient monuments such as the Shonat Al-Zebib conservation site in Abydos, south of Sohag. The site which marks the funerary cult enclosure of King Khasekhemwy dates back to the Second Dynasty, making it one of the world's oldest free-standing masonry buildings. Ricciardone believes that conserving such monuments can have a direct effect on poverty eradication. "We hope that by preserving these monuments we will also add to the attraction of Sohag in terms of tourism, and that too can generate some employment opportunities," he explained.
The conservation effort, which cost LE5 million, took place under the umbrella of the Egyptian Antiquities Programme (EAP) and was conducted by New York University's Institute of Fine Arts. The conservation work included the use of sand bag buttresses to stabilise the deteriorating mudbrick walls surrounding the funerary."

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