Egypt’s road building drive eases jams but leaves some unhappy

At weekends, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi is often driven out to a road construction site in Cairo where he is pictured surveying stretches of recently poured asphalt and being briefed by workers.

The highways and bridges he inspects are the most visible part of a big infrastructure push meant to galvanise Egypt's economy after decades of rapid population growth and unplanned building.

Led by the government and the military, it includes several new cities and one million low-cost homes and has helped pull Egypt through the economic shock of the pandemic and remain in growth last year.

After overthrowing Egypt's first democratically elected president in 2013 and pushing through painful fiscal reforms, Sisi is invested in the infrastructure drive's success.

But there is a cost. Some of those displaced by new roads are unhappy at losing their homes, others at seeing their neighbourhoods suddenly transformed. Analysts question how much difference the infrastructure boom can make while structural economic problems persist.

One area of intense activity is eastern Cairo, where new roads and bridges scythe through the urban sprawl towards a futuristic capital under construction in the desert and due to open this year.

In the Ezbet el-Hagana neighbourhood, drilling machines and diggers are laying out an intersection that cuts through cheap, informal housing, of which hundreds of units have been demolished to make way for the road.

Source: Reuters

Abdel Fattah al-Sisi Egyptian