Egypt 2050: Science Museums

Here's a little fact: I've been to the Ontario Science Centre more times than the Egyptian Museum. Of all museums I've been to I would say that most of them were science museums. But it saddens me that we don't have any real science museums in Egypt. I really wish that would change.

I would argue that we need several science museums. But I would settle for just one great one. A great science museum is all about being interactive. It is about having a huge number of displays that cover most science disciplines and help people learn about them using cool interactive displays. Of course not everything can interactive but some can be replaced with shows. My most memorable show was the Lightning show at the Boston Museum of Science.

 I won't say there are no science museums in Egypt wikipedia lists four. The only one I have been to was the Child Museum. And for obvious reasons due to my previous experiences it was disappointing. The museums I had been to before were big enough to cover in one day if you rushed a bit, but this one was less than three hours in total. In a way we need a museum that is a lot larger.

To me it seems that we see that museums in general are about celebrating our history. And to that end we seem content showing off artifacts made by our ancestors. But even a science museum is about history. One possible theme for a large part of a museum could be dedicated to reconstruction of devices used in pharaonic and Islamic eras. Those were times of great scientific advancement and achievement. Also seeing how people used solve problems might even be a source of inspiration for new high-tech solutions.

I understand how a really good museum would be a major financial endeavour. But it should be a small price to help inspire people to get excited about sciences in our culture. I'd love to see a museum that is just as much about looking forward as looking back at science.

Anyone want to help start?

Egypt 2050: Celebrating the Unique

I'm not totally sure about if this a dream for Egypt. I'm also a little worried it might disintegrate into a rant. Let's hope for the best.

There were two triggers. Two ads. For a while Egyptian streets have been peppered with billboards that say 'The President' in both Arabic and English in white letters on a blue background. Nobody really knows who's doing it but we all know it is expensive. Less than a week ago I started to see a new ad. In golden letters on a background the signs say 'Ra'ees Masr' in Arabic meaning The President of Egypt and in English the sign also says 'President Egypt'. Boy did I laugh. A copy cat campaign burning money and not associated with a face and done by someone that who doesn't know English but just had to use it. I hate that.

Reviving an Egyptian Car Company

News has been circulating that the government is working on reviving the Nasr Car Company. There was a time when Fiat licensed out its cars and the whole production lines to countries of the eastern block. Nasr was one of them, to some extent. You see we never purchased the whole lines and we relied on assembling complete knock down kits. We assembled the Zastava 128 all the way till 2009. We probably would have gone on but Zastava stopped producing the kits. And that is why the company was being dissolved; there was no plan B.

Egypt 2050: University Towns

I recently wrote a post about Egyptian youth needing to dream a lot farther ahead here. This is the first of many of my dreams I'd like to see before 2050.


Egypt has an exploding population. We have an approximate population density of 76/sq.km but our real density is around 2700/sq.km. There is an obvious need to build new cities but most new cities need a purpose. I would love to see a few university towns like Lund, Sweden, Kingston,Ontario and Carbondale,Illinois.

For a long time the only university in Egypt that wasn't government owned was the AUC. Then in the mid-nighties we started to get private universities. Most of the new universities are privately owned and are run for profit. And that is why we have had to define a third type of university which is a civil university. A civil university is essentially a private university that is also not for profit. It is also not owned by an individual or individuals unlike regular private Egyptian universities.

Egypt Getting Sharia Law

One of my aunts emailed my mom asking for our opinions about what is going on in Egypt. The main point being what's going on with the Muslim Brotherhood and them imposing Sharia Law. Hmm. Ok. Its complicated.

Sharia Law is mostly a buzz word that American media uses to scare the general public. Sharia Law is used by bad people like Taliban and Pakistani tribes and they are laws that are against human rights, female rights and generally anything bad they do. And by instituting it in Egypt we can say goodbye to human rights too.

My understanding of what would be called "Sharia Law" is ruling with laws that are compliant with the teachings of Islam. In many cases where we hear of violations, in places like tribal Pakistan, the problem is not so much Islamic law but that it is mixed with tribal traditions. In Egypt we only have a problem if they go and throw out all laws, and say we are going with "Sharia Law". But that is not going to happen. So far we're going to have a constitution, a president, a parliament and regular state functions. Nobody in Egypt can truthfully say they are afraid of waking up tomorrow to a totally new system. In a way people don't find it weird when Christian conservatives want Christian values in their laws. Its only logical that with us mostly Muslim that we'll want Islamic values.

That's not to say nobody is worried at all. Even I worry a bit about what might happen on some social issues. Some of the more extreme Islamic factions would love to see things like total segregation of the sexes and similar things. But so far they are not the majority. Other things that the west like to complain about like capital punishment are already in the current laws.

My question would be why should western societies be all worked up about social issues in Islamic countries? Well apart from it being a common topic in the news and commentary? There's actually more to Islamic laws than just social issues but you wouldn't know that from the news. In Islamic economics interest is outlawed. An Islamic government would try to do away with its debt based monetary and economic policies. The west has used the IMF and World Bank for decades to 'aid' middle eastern countries with loans. And when you owe people money they are usually able to control you. What really frightens the west is that countries like Egypt will no longer depend on western foreign aid and would be a lot more hard to manipulate and control. And that's what really worries the west.

So let's talk Egypt and where it is now. We are a new democracy. Everyone is new to it and there will be growing pains. The current parliament has a majority of what you may call Islamic background. And the biggest portion is the Muslim Brotherhood. Under Mubarak the Brotherhood was outlawed but was left to exist as a scarecrow for the west. Whenever the west criticized the lack of democracy in Egypt Mubarak would say he was keeping the Islamists out of power. The Muslim Brotherhood were the only real and organized opposition under Mubarak. For them to win the majority was quite logical in the first free elections. But nobody is perfect.

The Muslim brotherhood has its own growing pains. Under Mubarak they could be secretive in their operations. The oppression of the regime did in a way dictate a strict hierarchical organization with centralized decision making. They are finding that making decisions aren't as easy as it used to.

Egyptians think of democracy as the rule of the majority. That is true to some extent. But usually there is an all inclusive debate first before decisions are taken.  However the Brotherhood have been taking the majority rule a little too far. The process for electing the constitutional committee caused quite an uproar. The process was rushed and quite a few of the elected, while possibly quite qualified, were unknown to the public. The problem was mainly the lack of any dialogue about the proposed members before the elections. A democracy works a lot smoother when a dialogue happens first and then an agreement is reached at least among the majority. It also helps people understand actions better. The idea seems to be that if you are the majority then you don't have to sell your proposals to the public first. There are plenty of other examples of growing pains.

Politically, apart from the Muslim Brotherhood most other parties are still finding their feet. There are more conservative parties, liberal parties, socialist parties and even parties founded by ex-NDP, Mubarak's ruling party, members. Usually under each category there are several parties and it'll take a while for each wing to consolidate.

An important point to understand is that most people are participating in politics for the first time. The second largest party in the parliament is Al Noor, a salafi party. Salafis are more conservative than the Muslim Brotherhood. On a parliamentary visit to Uganda some Al Noor MPs wouldn't stand during the national anthems 'because its not an Islamic tradition'. Obviously they needed a lesson on not offending friends. But my point is that most are still finding their feet, and that will take time.

So is Egypt getting better? Not yet. We first need a president to take over from the military. We also need a constitution that doesn't give the military extraordinary privileges. We have people that were close to the old regime that don't want Egypt to stabilize. Some have monopolies that will go once a stable government has the time to look into their businesses and their corruption. In a way the revolution hasn't gotten to power yet. So real change has yet to start.

One thing some people in the west are afraid of is war. They are afraid an Islamic government or heck any free government would set its sights going to war with Israel. And those fears, however they may be portrayed in the media, are just ridiculous. Egypt has a lot on its plate. We have at least 40% of the populatioon below poverty. We have high unemployment, high illiteracy and a dysfunctional education system. And we don't have any significant weapon development programs. We used to get our military supplies from the Soviets and now from the US. Its unlikely anyone would want to supply us for a war and realistically we'd need a few decades to have anything meaningful when it comes to locally developed arm.

Egyptians dream that it one day becomes a political and economic powerhouse in the region not unlike Turkey. I sure hope so too. But it will take time.

One thing that is for sure, Egyptians don't really want the west to be involved.

Egypt 2050: The place I want to retire

This isn't about my dream for 2050 Egypt but more about why we should and what we should do it. We have a presidential election coming up and it would seem logical to talk about that. But I don't want to. The scene of politics is pretty ugly right now and in many ways not worth talking about. But what I do want to do is transcend the short term commotion and look at what I want to happen for our future.

The way I see it is we need  people in their twenties to be an integral part of planning for Egypt's future. As much we may or may not have a good government and parliament, they do tend to look at solving immediate problems. So to get people to think about their future you really need people who expect to have a pretty long one. That's why we need the youth doing the planning. Not just the dreaming but the planning.

I'm not saying youth will do everything unsupervised or unguided. Absolutely not. But what we need is the energy and creativity of the younger minds. Older experts should to my mind be involved for guidance but not for control. The way I see it is an expert on a matter has spent years gaining that knowledge and fine tuning his skills in a certain field. He has good knowledge of his field's current state and maybe several years in the future. But for looking at a future picture, big or small, what you really need is a vague understanding of where we stand and an imagination to think big. When you've spent years defining the box ots hard to think outside it but if you don't know of the box then you really can do some crazy things.

My fear is our parents generation are not really used to planning ahead. If we don't get the hang of it soon we'll hit middle age and we'll have to wait for our kids to do. And that just won't do.

We need three levels. The first is just shooting crazy ideas. Then when their simmered down we need to take them and start studying them and looking at their feasibility. That's where experts come in. Not to shoot the ideas down but provide the guidance to help the ideas mature and run their due course. And finally ideas still standing can go on to carried out.

Last year Wael Ghonim asked people on "We are all Khaled Said" facebook page what they wanted to change in Egypt and what did Egypt need to do. Lots of people responded. Nile University did some data analysis on the thousands of posts but that was about it. There was no sustained drive to create an entity that was solely about discussing our future dreams. It was like everyone got something off their chest and then they went back to their lives.

So I don't know about you, but I'd like to have a say in what the Egypt that i retire in looks like because the I definitely am not too happy with the Egypt I live in.

Update: It turns out there are a few initiatives that are trying to do similar things. egypt2020vision.com/ and bankelafkar.com are two examples out there. The Egypt 2020 vision seems the most proactive although its first round will be this week. Although I wonder about their idea of submitting the ideas to ruling bodies and then following up on them. If they intend on lobbying for their ideas it may be a good idea, I for one am supportive of anyone that wants to proactive with their ideas.