Nile River (Luxor to Aswan) / Dahab, Sinai / Cairo
In most ways, Egyptians use technology like people from other modern and cosmopolitan developing countries such as India. Infrastructure is not great, but it exists. Prices are not great, but they are suitable for the middle class. So, people have smartphones and use the most popular apps like WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook.
The country is famous for the “Facebook revolution” in 2012 when millions of young people organized on Facebook to protest then-president Mubarak. In response to the protests, Mubarak was forced by the Army to step down. Democratic elections led to the Muslim Brotherhood gaining power. MB is a right wing extreme Islamist organization that quickly tried to institute Islamic laws, change the constitution and grab power. The public protested, leading to the replacement of their leaders by senior members from the Egyptian Army, who currently hold power. People seem to both respect and fear President el-Sisi, a man who is both described as someone who is fighting corruption, and who is building prisons to lock up all his opponents. It was not clear to what extent Egyptians live under a military dictatorship right now, but comments from various people indicated that freedom of speech does not exist. This is an interesting contrast to comments that social media allows for the exchange of ideas, news, and information so that people can self-organize without the cooperation of traditional media channels. Activitsts seem to be skating on thin ice.
Democracy does not come easily to a former dictatorship. Two people (one native Cairo, one long-term expat) independently told me that “Egypt is not ready for democracy” because Egyptians are not educated enough to vote sensibly. Of the two, it was the European-educated Cairo resident who explained to me that people don’t know what “freedom” means. According to her, people think it means “I get things for free” when in fact it means people have to all work towards collaborative self-governance. I noticed such a gap across Africa: democratic elections exist but people don’t know how to make democracy work. Governments are authoritarian and often corrupt.
Literacy is an endemic current issue which limits many aspects of life, not just government. Limits in literacy also affect technology adoption, since most modern technologies – and especially the most affordable ones – are based on reading and writing, and thus require basic literacy to be useful. Services like YouTube are widely popular because they can reach even illiterate people, but using them costs more, and with lack of education usually comes a lack of money to afford higher bandwidth services.
