Huge population growth and food insecurity count among the factors that fuelled the revolution in Egypt and serve as a caution for other countries facing human and environmental overload, say analysts.
Egypt – and Tunisia, Algeria and Yemen to a lesser extent – found itself in a perfect storm in which massive youth unemployment conjoined with hunger and resentment of poverty to threaten an authoritarian regime, they say.
In just 25 years, Egypt’s population has risen by nearly two-thirds, from 50 million in 1985 to around 83 million today, with an average age of 24.
“The demographic change is very significant,” said Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, New York.
The rise placed heavier burdens on housing and food production in a country that is mostly desert and depends almost entirely on a river that is in worrying decline, he said.
It also helped to create a sea of angry, jobless young people when expatriate work in the Gulf dried up after the 2008 economic crisis.
And it made the world’s No. 1 wheat importer more exposed to dissent when global food prices surged to a record high in January. After events in Tunisia, the rise fanned protests which developed into a challenge that toppled Hosni Mubarak.
“It’s perfectly understandable how this spark went off, although it’s not simple to predict when it’s going to happen,” Sachs said in an interview.
He added: “This is a global ecological phenomenon of rising world populations, increasing climate unsustainability and pushing up against the barriers of food productivity in many places.”
Youssef Courbage of France’s National Institute for Demographic Studies said Egypt’s tens of millions of births in the 1980s and 1990s had heightened many of its problems in 2011.
“When a population grows too swiftly, resources per habitant fall proportionately,” Mr Courbage said.
This was especially so in the labour market, where “the revolt of youth” stemmed in part from the impossibility of finding a decent job, even with a university education.
Demographic growth in Egypt was around 2.8 per cent in the mid-1980s, falling gradually to around 1.8 per cent last year, according to US and UN data.
Factbox
A junta of senior military commanders was handed power by Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak who stepped down after three decades of autocratic rule in the face of widespread popular protest. The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces is headed by Defence Minister Hussein Tantawi. This breakdown on the Egyptian military is from the Military Balance published by the International Institute for Strategic Studies in Britain.
- Force numbers: Some 468,500 active soldiers and 479,000 reservists.
- Of these troops, 340,000 belong to the army, 18,500 to the navy, 30,000 to the air force and 80,000 to air defences. The country also counts some 397,000 paramilitaries.
- Army: Four armoured divisions, seven mechanised infantry divisions and anti-terrorist units.
- Equipment: The army is mainly US-equipped, with 973 of its 3,723 battle tanks being Abrams. It has 4,160 armoured vehicles.
- Air force: 460 fighter jets, including two squadrons of French Mirages and two squadrons of American F-16s, as well as Russian MiGs.
- It has numerous combat and transport helicopters, including French Gazelles, and American Black Hawks and Chinooks.
- Navy: four submarines.
- The US gives key ally Egypt a €950 million military aid package every year.
Author: Richard Ingham | Source: Times of Malta [February 16, 2011]