July 21, 2013
The official unemployment rate in Egypt rocketed to 13.2
percent in the first quarter of 2013. The news added to the gloom of Egyptians
complaining that the country’s economic fortunes have taken a nasty turn for
the worse since the January 25 revolution. However, there’s a crack of light in
the darkness. Ayman
Ismail, an assistant professor of
management at AUC, says that entrepreneurship in Egypt is actually booming.
According to Ismail, who holds the Abdul Latif Jameel Endowed Chair of Entrepreneurship, there has been a notable sprouting of business
incubators in the past three years—including one that he has helped form at the
School of Business. Young Egyptians are rushing to establish small startups, he
says, partly because of the increasing scarcity of jobs in both government and
the traditional private sector. While the trend is welcome, it won’t have an
immediate impact. “There are three prerequisites for any economic growth in
Egypt,” Ismail explained. “Political stability. Security. Rule of law.”
Experts
participating in the Egypt-India
Dialogue, a symposium on development sponsored by the Indian Embassy in
Cairo, India’s Observer Research
Foundation, and AUC’s School of Global Affairs and Public Policy
in June, identified something they have in common: local media is playing a
strong role, for better or worse, in shaping political discourse. Part of the
problem in India, explains Suhasini
Haidar, an anchor for CNN-IBN (Cable
News Network-Indian Broadcasting Network), is that a third of the country’s
channels are owned by political organizations. “People who are not politically
affiliated are finding it harder and harder to live in that television
universe,” she says. Moataz
Abdel Fattah, a professor of public policy and administration
at the AUC, describes a similar media landscape in Egypt, but with a
difference. With the unleashing of intense political competition after the fall
of an authoritarian regime, he says, “We are discovering each other as
Egyptians right now. The media plays an important role in that.”