Life in Modern Cairo

1) Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, seen here greeting one of the African heads of state on an official visit to Cairo.

Since 1952, Egypt has been a republic, headed by a president, who is the head of the ruling political party. The current president, Hosni Mubarak, has been in power since 1981, and he is the head of the National Democratic Party, the ruling political party. Although there is a vice president position in the government, President Mubarak has never appointed anyone to that position.

The Egyptian political system is a parliamentary system, based on that of Great Britain, with a couple of modifications. In Britain, the head of the government is the head of the political party, who has the title "Prime Minister." Many countries with parliamentary governments have a permanent speaker of the parliament, who holds the title of "President," or "Speaker of the Parliament," a position that does not hold much power.

In Egypt, the President is the head of the ruling party, and the speaker of the Parliament is called the Prime Minister, which is the reverse of the British system. Egypt, like both Britain and the United States, has a bicameral legislature, that is to say that there are two houses of parliament. The higher house is the Majlis al-Shoura, which is the equivalent of the Senate or the House of Lords, and the Lower House is the Majlis al-Sha'ab, or "People's Assembly," the rough equivalent of the House of Representatives or the House of Commons.

The Majlis al-Shoura and Majlis al-Sha'ab are both filled through candidates voted into office in popular elections. All adult men and women in Egypt have the right to vote in elections. Both houses are elected to five year terms. There are 454 seats in the Majlis al-Sha'ab, 444 of which are voted into office, the remaining ten of whom are appointed by the President. The Majlis al-Shoura consists of 276 seats, 88 of whom are appointed by the president, the rest of whom are voted into office. The president is nominated by the Majlis al-Sha'ab, and is then voted into office in a national election.

Although many of Egypt's laws are based on the Qur'an and Islamic practice, the country's government is secular, and national law is separate from religious law. The Egyptian supreme court serves to ensure that laws are fair and in accordance with the Constitution, which was put into effect in 1971.

The government provides basic social services to its people, such as electricity, postal service, water, telephone and television, etc. The government has, in recent years, begun to privatize some of these in an attempt to provide them at less cost, and at less expenses to government.

All men are required to serve in the army for eighteen months when they reach the age of twenty. However, if the man is going on to university study, he is allowed to postpone his service, and most men who graduate from university never go into the military. Until recently, the Egyptian government guaranteed a job to anyone who graduated from college. This meant that there were a lot of government employees, and there was not enough work to go around. Now there are so many employees that the average Egyptian government worker does twenty-seven minutes of work per day. Because there are so many people working for the government, the jobs are not high paying, and most government workers in Cairo have a second job in the evening, driving a taxi or working in a shop.

Economically, Egypt is one of the poorer countries in the Middle East. Unlike its neighbors in the Persian Gulf region, Egypt does not have a large oil reserve to provide income. Although there are some reserves along the Red Sea coast, they do not provide as much support for the Egyptian economy as such reserves do elswhere in the Middle East. What Egypt does not have in oil, it has tried to make up for in the mining of other natural resources, such as iron ore, phosphates and salt.

Manufacturing has also provided a large source of income for Egypt. Textile manufacturing is responsible for nearly one third of Egyptian exports, as Egyptian cotton is still considered to be among the highest quality cotton in the world. Other big industries in Egypt include steel and chemical production, as well as food processing and distribution.

2) In recent years, computers have become a thriving business, with Egypt taking the lead in the development of Arabic language software.

Many young Egyptian men migrate to Cairo in search of work, because the vast majority of the country's companies are headquartered there. Many of these young men are unskilled laborers, however, and have trouble finding work in the city. The former resort city of Helwan has become a heavy industrial center, surrounded by concrete and steel plants. Cairo's metro system, which carries nearly one million people every day, runs from the poorer neighborhoods to the northeast of the city center down to Helwan, carrying workers to and from the factories. The area called Imbaba, to the northwest of the city center, on the west bank of the Nile, is home to many chemical-related industries, such as fertilizer manufacturers and pharmaceutical companies.

Computers have become a big business in Egypt in the last few years. The suburb of Medinat Nasr is home to many of the largest computer and software companies. Some of the leading Arabic-language software companies in the world are based in Cairo. Not unexpectedly, many young Egyptians are studying computer science and are becoming involved with the computer and software industry. The Internet is also a big business in Egypt, even though most Egyptians do not yet have access to the Internet, so e-commerce is still a small but growing sector. E-mail is becoming more and more common, and every day new internet companies are started up to meet the growing demand of the Cairo market.

While big business has become a major player in the economic life of Cairo, traditionally the majority of the business in the city was in the hands of the small merchant, owning a small shop stocked with items manufactured by family members or other employees. In the old city, these small businesses can still be found, manufacturing hand-crafted items and offering them for sale, although more and more, these items are sold alongside others that have been imported.