‘Urban Authoritarianism’: Egypt’s Leader Cements New Dynasty With New Cities

Egypt recently announced it will build a new desert city named Jirian just west of Cairo, part of a massive urban and agricultural project to reclaim about 2.5 million acres of desert west of the original Nile Delta.  

The project will reroute about seven percent of Egypt’s annual Nile River quota from fertile Delta land via a man-made channel winding through the desert, hoping to boost the production of key crops such as wheat and corn, and lessen the country’s dependence on imports.  

Egypt, which is facing mounting water shortages and power constraints, as well as a deepening economic crisis, also wants the project to help increase the value of state assets and boost land prices through “non-traditional, innovative ideas” that are part of “an urban and development revolution,” said Prime Minister Mustafa Madbouly, announcing the project last week. 

“We are talking about full-spectrum development,” he added, describing a sprawling urban zone that will include industry, logistics hubs, a free economic zone, homes for “between 2.5 and 3 million families,” and create 250,000 jobs. 

Still, as Nicholas Simcik Arese of the Architectural Association in London told CNN, Egyptians have heard it all before.  

That is because the initiative is only the latest in a string of megaprojects launched by Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi since he took power in a coup in 2013. His flagship project is a $58 billion administrative capital east of Cairo, part of the Egypt Vision 2030 project. But it is also part of the construction of what Yezid Sayigh of the Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center calls the “Second Republic” in Egypt.  

This means, in practice, the president granting himself “hyper-presidential” powers exceeding those of all his predecessors, he said, while keeping the military at the top of the political and economic food chain.  

Even so, he added that the new republic is unlikely to be able to sustain itself in spite of the harsh crackdown by the government over the past 12 years on any form of dissent. 

“President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi is remaking Egypt,” wrote Sayigh. “(He) is building a new republic defined by a social ethos of ‘nothing for free,’ a new form of state capitalism, and hyper-presidential powers set within a military guardianship that secures his regime but leaves it unable to resolve political, economic, and social challenges. … however, its inability to achieve social and political hegemony and its overreliance on coercion leave the Second Republic at permanent risk of unravelling.”  

Part of the problem with the makeover is financial, analysts say. Egypt is broke.  

Over the past year and a half, Houthi attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea have caused severe disruption in maritime traffic through Egypt’s Suez Canal, with revenues falling more than 60 percent over the past year, adding strain on the country’s already failing economy, according to the Atlantic Council.  

Meanwhile, for years, the country has depended on billions of dollars from the International Monetary Fund and other lenders and donors, including the European Union and the United States, to keep it solvent and keep the population – and the political elite – from revolting.  

Egyptian officials say these megaprojects are the solution to the country’s economic woes, and will promote long-term growth. However, analysts say they are contributing to the country’s soaring foreign debt, which quadrupled since 2015 to reach $155.2 billion by late 2024. 

Prominent Egyptian billionaire businessman Naguib Sawiris recently called for a reassessment of Egypt’s large-scale development projects because of the financial strain they impose on the country. 

“… we have an overambitious president who is doing mega projects that are requiring a lot of foreign currency,” Sawiris said recently. “We should have a second look at these projects.”

But that is unlikely to happen, even when the megaprojects fail to pay off, as they have in the past.  

Part of the reason is that the military government, which essentially runs the Egyptian economy, has too much vested in these projects and too much to lose, wrote the McGill International Review in an article called “Urban Authoritarianism.”  

A bigger issue, says Eurasia Review, is how Egypt views itself as too important to the world to be allowed to collapse. 

“Over the past five decades or so, Egypt has capitalized on its geostrategic importance in the Middle East to obtain the financial support sorely needed to keep its economy afloat and its political order intact,” it wrote. “This pattern spawned the view… in short, Egypt will remain ‘too big to fail.’”