Egypt has had a long history of provisions and an equally long commitment to promotion. In terms of provision, there are emergency allocations secured by state bodies for victims of natural and other disasters (EHDR 2005). Inscribed in Egypt’s constitutions are promotive allocations such as the right to education, access to affordable health, to higher learning and to shelter. The large in kind-subsidies of fuel and food were also designed as promotive measures as they were universal and not tied to specific or transient needs. Moreover, the state has had an arduous but constant commitment to job creation through it overstaffed public sector and government bodies. Although programs for social insurance, transfers, health and productive subsidies have long been offered; these programs had been poorly targeted and the quality of their implementation restricted by under-funding, limited funds and slow uptake of innovation and technology. The past decade has witnessed the introduction of new programs for cash transfers, food subsidy point system, revised bread subsidy delivery mechanisms, digital payments, and a unified national registry of beneficiaries. This chapter uses a qualitative analytical lens to interpret social protection in Egypt since the turn of the current century. The chapter tries to construct the economic and political logic of social protection programs and to illustrate the centrality of the politics of poverty management to social spending in Egypt