In February, media images of a jubilant Tahrir Square flashed across the world as news of President Hosni Mubarak’s resignation began to spread. The revolution had been fast, just 18 days of steady protests covered by flocks of journalists. For many, it signaled a sudden shift in perceptions of the Arab world.
A pervasive story followed the arc of young, cool, Egyptian Twitterati getting together on social networking sites to throw a dictator out with the dishwater. But in a workshop on Monday, “Throwing A Spotlight: The Media’s Capacity for Facilitating Economic Development in Egypt,” the panelists said this was not the only story in Egypt’s revolution–and far from being the most important. The real reason had a lot less to do with the internet, and a lot more to do with money.
The (no) Internet connection
“Mostly, these people do not have Facebook accounts,” says Yasser Alwan, a photographer and human rights activist from Cairo, as he showed pictures of the city’s working class. Yet they were part of the revolution, he said.
What they do have, he said, is instability. Employed, but still living in undesirable working conditions, with poor health facilities and vulnerable to police, he said they were experiencing the economics of the country first hand. The protesters, he said, were coming from all backgrounds—and they were also protesting across the country, not just in Cairo. “If the demonstrations had not taken place nationwide, the revolution would not be possible.”
Doing it for the money
In 2010, the number of internet hosts in the country ranked Egypt at 67th in the world, according to statistics from the CIA World Factbook. Unemployment was at 9.7%, putting the country at 107th in the world.
“It’s one thing to read international reports, and it’s another thing to talk to people about their frustrations,” says Magda Kandil, executive director and senior researcher at the Egyptian Centre for Economic Studies.
She noted that though the economy had been growing, the public sector had slowed. Inflation was at 25%, she said, and bureaucratic inefficiencies slowed down businesses and made private sector borrowing difficult. Tourism was one of the main industries. For large numbers of college graduates, there were no jobs.
Wael Gamal, the managing editor at the l Shorouk newspaper, noted that 64% of Egyptians joined the protests because of a lack of jobs and a poor economy, according to a poll released in April by the International Republican Institute. Only 19% said they joined because of a lack of democracy.
Revolution debt
But if the economy was the problem, the question remains whether the revolution will solve it. “The only way to go forward is to create jobs and prevent inflation,” says Kandil. “And the only way to do this is to prioritize government spending.”
But Gael says that there was not a trickle-down of economic growth before the revolution, and corruption is still a problem. And when the media covers economics, the old regime is far from gone. “We have inherited after the revolution the old structures,” he says. He noted the country needs different journalism to step away from the old, state-owned press.
The country may take its cues from other former dictatorships, such as Indonesia. But it will be a challenge to jump-start an economy in a time of financial constraint. The work is far from done, said Alwan. For many of the people he photographs, their lives have become even more unstable since the revolution, he said. “For me, Tahrir Square is not over.”
By: Katherine Dunn
