A look at Egypt's pressing priorities as el-Sisi secures third presidential term

The war next door

The war in the neighbouring Gaza Strip has evolved into a major national security threat for Egypt on different counts.

Unrelenting Israeli attacks on different parts of Gaza have displaced hundreds of thousands of its residents and forced them to head south, near the Egyptian border.

This displacement comes amid calls inside Israel for resettling the people of Gaza in Sinai, Egypt's north-eastern territory, which shares borders with Gaza and Israel.

Read more: Egypt weighs its options as Gaza refugee surge becomes real possibility

Egypt has categorically rejected this Israeli suggestion and warned against liquidating the Palestinian issue by depopulating Gaza — a move that could encourage the depopulation of the occupied West Bank as a next step.

In his election victory speech on 18 December, el-Sisi referred to the dangers the current war in Gaza poses to the Palestinian issue and Egypt's national security.

In the coming period, analysts say, el-Sisi will most likely campaign for entering more aid to Gaza to prevent an expected influx of hundreds of thousands of hungry and desperate residents of the Palestinian territory into the Egyptian side of the border.

"The entry of the aid is crucial to prevent the nightmare of the Gaza residents breaking into Sinai from coming true," Gamal Salama, a professor of political science at Suez Canal University, told Al Majalla.

"There is also an urgent need for a truce or a ceasefire to be reached," he added.

El-Sisi will also most likely continue to reject the displacement of Palestinians from Gaza into the Sinai, lobby for ending the war and campaign for a permanent settlement of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

The Egyptian army is also apparently closely watching developments on Egypt's north-eastern border, with the Egyptian minister of defence referring on 4 December to what he described as 'uncalculated escalation' in the Palestinian territories.

Economic turmoil

Egypt is an economic success story that is being undermined by external shocks — primarily the wars in Ukraine and Gaza.

Compounding the effects of COVID-19, these wars have inflicted a devastating toll on the Egyptian economy, holding back revenues from important foreign currency sources, including tourism, and raising the prices of commodities in the international market, thus putting immense pressure on foreign currency reserves and the Egyptian pound.

In light of a $3bn loan deal with the International Monetary Fund, Egypt has to encourage private sector participation in economic activities, reduce state presence in the market to a minimum and sell dozens of state-owned assets.

Read more: Egypt's deal with the IMF comes with dramatic consequences for the economy

The same deal also makes it necessary for Egyptian monetary planners to follow an uncontrolled foreign exchange rate regime — one that allows the Egyptian pound to float freely.

Egypt has done little to apply these reforms since signing the loan deal in December of 2022.

Faced with immense internal and external pressures to push ahead with reform, the Egyptian government will most likely bow to demands for the free-floating of the Egyptian pound, even as el-Sisi pledged in June this year not to allow any further devaluations of the national currency.

The Egyptian government will also find it necessary to exit some economic activities and level the playing field for the private sector, including scaling back the economic activities of the armed forces.

The Egyptian army is involved in non-military business, including the ownership of a large number of factories that produce civilian products. However, some people in the private sector complain that these business activities are opening the door for unfair competition between the armed forces and the private sector.

These moves, economists say, will ease pressures on the Egyptian pound by allowing foreign investments to trickle in, which will, in the end, reflect on the economic conditions of ordinary people.

Runaway population growth

Egypt's uncontrollable population growth is — by far — the most daunting challenge facing the Arab country. Its current population is estimated at 104.5 million, with around eight million Egyptians living outside the country.

Egypt's population grows at an average of 1.6%, making it one of the fastest growing in the world. If the population keeps growing at the current pace, there will be 157 million Egyptians by 2050 and 205 million by 2100.

In the last ten years since el-Sisi took over, Egypt's population grew by 25 million, almost the size of the populations of Denmark, Finland, Slovakia, and Norway combined.

Egypt's sharp population growth shows how the country's family planning schemes over the years have fallen flat.

El-Sisi complained against this population growth several times in the past, warning that this dwarfs its resources, eats away at its economic growth and erodes the quality of life for people in the country.

Egyptians, he said on one occasion, would not enjoy the benefits of the growth of their country's economy — regardless of how high it is — as long as the birth rate remains as is.

The lack of mandatory birth control regulations accounts for Egypt's failure to restrain the growth of its population, specialists say. They point to the need for these regulations for Egypt to keep the growth of its population at a reasonable rate.

One suggestion in this regard is for the government to adopt a two-child policy, which commits the government to paying subsidies only to the first two children in each family.

"This policy is necessary to discourage parents from having more than two children," Makram Radwan, a member of the Committee on Health in the Egyptian parliament, told Al Majalla.

"Other incentives should also be offered to parents abiding by the policy so they can be role models for others," he added.

Existential threat

Egypt has been locked in negotiations aiming at reducing harm from a multibillion-dollar hydroelectric dam constructed by Ethiopia over the Blue Nile, the main tributary of the Nile River, Egypt's primary source of fresh water, for over a decade now.

Nevertheless, negotiations have hit a dead end, with Egypt accusing Ethiopia of wasting time until the dam is a fact on the ground.

The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam is expected to significantly reduce the amount of water flowing to Egypt from the Nile, negatively affecting its annual share of 55.5 billion cubic meters from the river.

Egypt is water-poor already, and the Ethiopian dam is expected to make it even poorer, causing massive devastation to its farmland and consequently threatening its food security.

El-Sisi described the dam several times in the past years as an 'existential threat'.

Negotiations between Egypt and Ethiopia, to which Sudan is party, focus on the rules of filling the dam's reservoir and the operation of the dam after its completion.

Despite Egypt's protestations, Ethiopia has unilaterally completed the fourth filling of the dam's reservoir and is preparing to make the fifth filling.

Egyptian and Ethiopian negotiators held a new round of negotiations in Addis Ababa on 19 December but reached no consensus like they have every time in the past ten years.

The view in Cairo is that Egypt does not have any cards to play to protect its Nile water share, especially with the dam's construction nearing completion. This, they say, leaves the Egyptian leader with no options.

"The dam has become a reality on the ground, and a huge amount of water is stored in its reservoir already," Abbas Sharaqi, a professor of water resources at Cairo University, told Al Majalla.

"But this does not rule out the possibility of reaching a deal," he added.