CAIRO – Spread over a patch of desert four times the size of Washington, DC, a surprising new capital is rising in Egypt, a great imperial styleembodying the grand ambitions of the president Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi and his cloak as the undisputed leader in power of the country.
The new administrative capital on the outskirts of Cairo includes Africa’s tallest building, a glass pyramid and a vast disc-shaped palace for el-Sissi inspired by symbols of the ancient Egyptian sun god.
Six years of development at an estimated cost of $ 59 billionyes, it is the grandest of a series of mega-projects built by a president determined to reshape Egypt.
highways of eight lanes crisscross the ruined streets of Cairo, skirting ancient tombs and the pyramids of Giza.
Gigantic newly built bridges cross the Nile.
A new summer capital shines on the Mediterranean coast, just outside the city of Alexandria.
The projects, carried out mostly by the country’s powerful armed forces, make el-Sissi the latest in a long line of Egyptian leaders, dating back centuries, who have sought to reflect their authority on impressive structures rising from the desert.
But as Egypt trudges through a severe economic recession, its finances are dangerously strained, doubts increase whether the country can afford el-Sissi’s grandiose dreams.
In the past six years alone, the International Monetary Fund gave to Egypt three loans for a total of about $ 20 billion, although aid from the United States kept coming.
Even so, the country is back in trouble.
The president “is borrowing money from abroad to build a big city for the rich,” said Maged Mandor, an Egyptian political analyst.
But poor and middle-class Egyptians are paying the price for megaprojects through taxes, less investment in social services and cuts in subsidies, even if the economic justification for the developments is questionable, he added.
Although funding for new projects remains opaque, they are funded in part by Chinese capital, as well as high-interest bonds that will be expensive for Egypt to pay for years to come.
some developers emirates they are also working on the new capital.
Egypt’s finances, in general, were fragile even before Russia invaded Ukraine in February.
El-Sissi was heavily in debt to finance mega-projects, as well as billions of dollars in international arms purchases, which helped quadruple the public debt for a decade.
Egypt earns too little to cover its debts.
Foreign investors have mostly stayed away from Egypt, deterred by the military’s tight grip on the economy.
This, combined with the lack of focus on developing domestic industries, has meant that the private sector, outside of oil and gas, has done so. contract every month for nearly two years.
bank investment Goldman Sachs recently estimated that Egypt needed a bailout 15 billion dollars of the International Monetary Fund to defend itself from its creditors.
Egypt’s finance minister, who confirms that the country is seeking a new loan from the IMF, said the actual amount it will receive is a lot minorand diplomats estimate the amount in $ 3 billion.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine rocked Egypt’s financial house of cards.
With interest rates and food prices soaring this summer, public finances were so strained that the government ordered shopping malls, stadiums and other public facilities ration air conditioning and dim the lights so they can sell more energy overseas.
Now, economists warn, Egypt is one of the few countries at significant risk of debt default, and even el-Sissi supporters are concerned about the economic pain ahead.
“2023 is going to be dark and awful,” said Amr Adeeb, a popular TV host and longtime supporter of the president recently.
As before, Egypt can be saved from disaster by its allies.
Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar have invested at least $ 22 billion in the country this year.
The United States, which supported an IMF bailout in 2016, provides a steady stream of military aid.
Although el-Sissi faced rare criticism from some of his own supporters for the dazzling mega-projects, he insisted they move on.
But that doesn’t mean their failing economy can support them.
While the government has promised the new cities will create millions of badly needed jobs and housing, economists say most of the jobs created so far are underpaid construction jobs.
Unless el-Sissi introduces bigger changes, such as loosening the military’s economic grip and reviving private industry, they say the benefits of the projects will be short term.
Egyptian municipalities, driven by rising prices and falling living standards, have already paid for el-Sissi’s ambitious projects.
In 2015, it rushed through an 8 billion dollar extension to the Suez Canal which was announced as the “rebirth of Egypt. “
But it failed to deliver the promised manna.
The Suez Canal generated $ 6.3 billion in revenue last year, well below the government’s original projections of $ 13 billion by 2023.
Rumors of discontent over the latest megaprojects first rang out in 2019 when, during the rare anti-government protests in Cairo, protesters chanted slogans mocking el-Sissi’s wife, a reference to some tips he had generously spent. to renew a Presidential palace.
“What if I have buildings?” el-Sissi said weeks later after thousands were jailed for the protests.
“They are for all Egyptians.”
While the fallout from the war in Ukraine this year pushed the price of staple food up, anti-Sissi hashtags flooded social media, including “hunger revolution”, “go away Sissi” and “wrath of the poor inevitably reaches “.
A new Egyptian capital would have to offer a breath from the smoke-choked chaos of Cairo, where the population exceeded 20 million.
Although the idea was first invented by Hosni Mubarak, the authoritarian leader who was ousted by the 2011 Arab Spring riots, el-Sissi took it to new heights:
a skyscraper built in China called the Iconic Tower stands at 400 meters the tallest building in Africa.
Tens of thousands of apartments have been built, though few are furnished or painted, giving the new city the look of a grandiose construction site.
Computer renderings imagine green boulevards, buzzing tram lines, and extensive use of digital technology:
About 6,000 cameras will monitor the streets of the new city, authorities will use artificial intelligence to optimize water use and waste management, and residents will file complaints using a mobile phone app.
El-Sissi initially promised that the new capital would be financed by foreign and local investors and the sale of government land in central Cairo.
Egyptian developers, some with ties to the military, were pushed by the government to do so help us build it.
But with investor interest waning, the president announced that the government would pay developers around $ 203 million per year renting ministries and other official buildings in the new office district, which is a direct burden on taxpayers.
El-Sissi insists that the Egyptians will thank him someday.
“When we started building new cities, it was said that we spent a lot of money for no good reason,” he said in February, defending the projects by citing the names of Cairo’s poor districts.
“How are they living?” she asked promptly.
But it is questionable how many ordinary Egyptians will feel at home in the new capital.
One afternoon, as the city was under construction, Mohammed Mahmood, 27, and Omar Shaikh, 28, a pair of construction workers in skinny jeans, stood among cranes and dust waiting for a bus back to Sohag. , 570 kilometers downstream.
With their belongings stuffed into cloth sacks, they said they doubt they would ever return to the glittering new city, where the cheapest apartment costs $ 80,000, once construction is complete.
“None of this is for us,” said Mahmood, pointing first to the buildings with the marble facade and then to a billboard with the image of el-Sissi:
“It’s for him.”
Few argue that Egypt, with a population of over 100 million growing by over 1 million a year, is in dire need of more housing.
But planners say el-Sissi would do better to repair his destroyed cities than to build new ones.
And the cost of the new capital goes up beyond finances.
Thirsty new cities threaten to suck precious water from the already depleted Nile, the country’s main water source.
To make way for new roads through Cairo and leading to the new city, the builders demolished large expanses of trees in the elegant historic center of Heliopolis.
At the very least, the new city risks becoming a symbol of el-Sissi’s increasingly imperialist government.
Thanks to the changes to the constitutional mandate limits he passed in parliament in 2019, el-Sissi could be in power until 2030 or more.
A vast military complex on the edge of the new city, the Octagon is seven times the size of the Pentagon, a new stockade of military power many miles from the Tahrir square in central Cairo, where revolutionaries mobilized in 2011 to overthrow Mubarak.
Few foresee that el-Sissi, whose draconian security services ruthlessly suppress any dissent, will soon face a similar uprising.
But as the cost of the new capital rises along with its mirror-fronted buildings, el-Sissi will have to face the discontent of Egyptians resenting the gap between his radical promises and the harsh realities of their own lives.
c.2022 The New York Times Company
Source: Clarin
