Egypt and its insoluble problems

Danilo Antón

Egypt is a paradoxical country. It is extremely arid, but of great fertility in its main river valley. 
It is overpopulated. With more than 95 million inhabitants in just 45,000 km2 of productive land has one of the largest population densities of the planet in its agricultural and urban areas. At the same time it possesses some of the most desolate and hot deserts of the world that extend for 950,000 km2.

The existence of this enormous human population is possible for only one reason: a river that is emissary of the humid African tropics and contributes its imposing flow of water and sediments to the arid Saharan lands of the North. That is why more than 95% of the Egyptians live in the Nile Valley.

The rest of the country is sparsely populated. There are few population centers in the coastal strips of the Mediterranean and Red Sea with some fishing and tourist communities, and a few oases associated with saline depressions.

In Cairo, the capital of the country, with 25 million inhabitants in the metropolitan area, rains just over 25 mm per year. In Luxor, to the south of the country, which has 500,000 inhabitants, it rains less than 1 mm of rain per year, so that for all practical purposes it can be said that it never rains.

The Nile Valley proper houses 90 million inhabitants, 95% of the country's total. This means 2000 inhabitants per km2, one of the highest densities in the world.

The practically unique characteristics of the Nile River allowed the emergence of the first civilizations. They were numerous and close communities that required cooperation to use the water resources of the river to develop their irrigated crops.

At present, however, the agricultural production of the exploitable lands of the country is not enough to supply and provide labor for the large population, giving rise to multitudes of unemployed young people who are unable to enter the labor market.

This social instability is manifested at the political level. Islamic radicalism, expressed by the Muslim Brotherhood and some more extremist groups, contrasts with the conservative and authoritarian political elite based on the armed forces.

Income that compensates for productive deficits in some way comes from tourism (which is hampered by insecurity in Egyptian cities), the repatriation of funds from Egyptian emigrants (several million economic emigrants) who work in oil countries of the Gulf, the contributions and investments of some countries of the latter region (for example, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates), and US military support.

But these contributions are not enough. In the first place, because the prevailing corruption prevents resources from being distributed among the population in general, secondly because ethnic-religious conflicts (between Muslims and Coptic Christians, between Sunnis and Shiites, etc.) discourage investment and tourism, and thirdly because environmental degradation (including degradation of agricultural soils) reduces productivity.

In the near future, the situation is not likely to improve, emigrant contributions and contributions from Gulf states are affected by low oil prices, tourism and agricultural production decline, and population growth continues.

In short, the country's social, environmental and political situation is unsustainable. This will result in greater instability, radicalization of religious extremism, greater violence, insecurity and increased poverty of large urban and rural majorities.

The incorporation of Egypt into the Saudi-Emirate alliance in the Yemen war and the blockade of Qatar that is still in force is not helping to resolve the situation, rather it is creating new problems.

In the next few years the 100 million Egyptians will enter a difficult and uncertain future of inequality, poverty and social, ethnic and religious conflicts.

From "Lands of few rains and lots of blood" by Danilo Antón, Piriguazú Ediciones.