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President El Sessi of Egypt
has recently addressed the nation regarding the national and international accomplishments
achieved in Egypt during the past 18 months.
What was of interest to me as social scientist
was his emphasis on population growth? He stated, “ Egypt is facing a ticking
bomb.”
He, of course, was referring
to Egypt high population growth. “There are 2.5 million new babies per year”.
According to the Egyptian
census record, by the end of December 2015, the total population will be 90
million people. This figure excludes the 8 to 10 million Egyptians working
outside Egypt.
I would like to stress here
that if the population growth continues at the same rate, Egypt would add
another 30 million people during the next 10 years. Hence, by the year 2025
Egypt population will reach 130 million!
Such population growth would
be a great challenge facing the Egyptian society, and would require serious
consideration from the government regarding the policy made to fulfill the
people’s basic needs. Such needs are: education, shelters, health care, food, and
higher wages.
In order to fulfill the
educational need for the 2.5 million additional people, 2000 new schools should
be built.
Even without such an increase the present
schools are in pitiful conditions. More than one third of the 47,000 schools in
Egypt now, are unfit to be used.
The Egyptian Minister of Education,
while referring to the high density of students in classes, admitted that there
is a need to create 58,000 new classrooms in order to lower the number of
students by half in each class. The large number of students in each class led
to a low quality of education and to the drop out of students as mentioned in
the Egyptian newspaper al masrawy (November 1, 2015).
As a result of the poor
quality of education in schools, some parents
are obliged to hire private teachers to help their children graduate. The
Egyptian government has estimated the coast families face to pay for private
lessons exceeds 16 billion Egyptian pounds per year!
It is a fact that there is a
correlation between the quality of education and economic growth. From an
economic and demographic theoretical model the 2.5 million increase in
population per year, requires the national economic growth
to be at least 5% to 7%
increase per year.
Egypt’s population growth has
already reached a critical stage, 94% of its population is living on 6% of the
total land. Hence, the Nile Valley and the Delta regions have the highest
population density in the world.
One should also stress the
fact that fresh water in Egypt has been decreasing to 600 cu.met. per person
per year. Egypt has reached the poverty level in regard to water availability.
As a result of the minimal
availability of water and land suitable for cultivation, Egypt is forced to
import 7 million metric tons of wheat per year and the government is subsidizing
the bread at a cost of 24 billion Egyptian pounds per year. Furthermore, the
government subsidizes energy, transportation and other basic food items.
This policy of subsidy led to
the continuing increase in the internal and external debts. The internal debts
have been estimated to exceed 2.11trillion Egyptian pounds, and the foreign
debts around 45 billion dollars.
The problem of population
growth in Egypt has been acknowledged since the early 1950s.
Presidents Nasser, Sadat.
Mubarak and now El Sessi have all advocated family planning policy.
In addition to the
government’ policy, Al Azhar institution has also supported family planning
programs. However, such programs were never successful.
I would like to conclude by
stating that the Egyptian government should seriously review its family
planning and birth control programs in order to curtail population increase.
For more information on
population growth in Egypt, check my blog: http://mid-east-today.blogspot.com
