Prices Soar as the Egyptian Economy Enters a Recession

Egypt, which has been in an economic recession since before its manifestations of political discontent in 2011, accumulates 85.6 percent of its economy in debt. 

As Egyptians demanded “bread, freedom and social equality” during the Arab Spring, their nation was plagued with precarious living standards and an unstable economy. Protests petitioning better administration of the economy brought global awareness to the Egyptian situation. Unemployment raged due to serious issues in infrastructure — such as the precarious maintenance of roads and unhelpful urban planning — besides the grave mismanagement of national economic investments. From 2013 to 2014, 6 percent of the Egyptian Gross Domestic Product was directed to fuel subsidies, which neglected the healthcare and infrastructure sectors. The towering unemployment rate of 13.4 percent in 2013 is largely due to infrastructure itself; the lack of road maintenance makes the working commute harder, similarly to the urban planning that could be better. As a result, Egypt enters a vicious cycle — or downward spiral — of dangerously low economic growth. 

The Egyptian Arab Spring activists in 2011 watched the economic recession rise from 9.8 percent to 13.5 percent in 2013 — and this percentage only grows. Besides the overinvestment in the fuel industry, the funding of long-term projects, such as building a new metropolis and the artificial “Green River,” a chain of lakes below the desert, also bog down the Egyptian economy. These two projects specifically exacerbate Egypt’s emergency climate crisis. When Nadeen Ebrahim from the CNN asked  Professor Nabeel Elhady at Cairo University about his input on Egyptian artificial states, he responded that carrying water to an artificial metropolis is far from sustainable — environmentally and financially.

Egypt continued to suffer economically in 2022. The impacts of the war in Ukraine reached the Middle East as fuel prices — the main source of investment in the Egyptian economy — climbed. Investors in Egypt swiftly retracted, causing the Egyptian pound to depreciate 14 percent against the U.S. dollar. Grain prices flew as Russian blockades made accessible trade impossible. Egypt, with Russia and Ukraine as two of its biggest importers of grain, no longer offered accessible bread prices, leading to widespread food insecurity.

From 2021 to January 2023, the prices for chicken, a standard item for the Egyptian diet, went from 30 Egyptian pounds to 70. Chicken swiftly turned into a luxury item in Egyptian kitchens, and the National Institute of Nutrition responded to criticism with the suggestion of eating chicken feet, which is not commonly eaten in Egypt, according to CNN. Using a photoshopped picture of the world-famous soccer player Cristiano Ronaldo and the proposed meal idea, starving Egyptians resorted to this advice, and the price of chicken feet doubled. The National Institute of Nutrition swiftly deleted the post after Egyptian influencers and news organizations noticed the falsehood of the image. 

Home to over 100 million people, Egypt undergoes a downward spiral of economic insufficiency. The issues of food shortage and insecurity, lack of governmental credibility and raging unemployment simultaneously join hands during this crisis. For over ten years now, Egyptians have demanded “bread, freedom and social equality.” Hopefully, with global cooperation and more efficient economic investments, the Egyptian people will receive what they have for so long been asking for.