All posts in Egypt

Egypt’s budding entrepreneurs get boost from US

by Admin on June 28, 2011 in Economy, Egypt with No comments

US senators John Kerry (D) of Massachusetts, left, and John McCain (R) of Arizona, third left, ring the bell to open Cairo stock exchange market Sunday, June 26, 2011. Kerry and McCain visited Cairo this weekend to underscore US support for economic and democratic reform, saying that it can help Egypt’s revolution succeed.

A ‘boot camp’ for Egyptian entrepreneurs is one of a number of US initiatives to support economic and democratic reform. But not all Egyptians welcome the help.

CSMonitor

Sitting in the banquet hall of a luxurious hotel on the banks of the Nile, Mohammed Kamalrattles off his ideas for new mobile phone applications. Among them: an app that will diminish Cairo’s suffocating traffic and reduce government spending on fuel in the post-Mubarak Egypt.

“I think I just need to play my cards right,” says the aspiring entrepreneur, sporting a striped shirt and khakis.

The young Egyptian software developer is a participant in this week’s NexGen IT Entrepreneurs Boot Camp, a five-day training event to help budding Internet technology businesses. It is part of a broader American initiative to help develop Egypt’s economy, particularly in the wake of the Feb. 11 revolution that ousted Hosni Mubarak.

US senators John Kerry (D) of Massachusetts and John McCain (R) of Arizona visited Cairo this weekend to underscore US support for economic and democratic reform, saying that it can help Egypt’s revolution succeed.

“It’s our hope that by providing for the economic future and well being of the people of Egypt that we will, all of us, be able to move more effectively down that road to peace,” said Senator Kerry, adding that such reforms ultimately serve America’s security interests.

The US has provided more than $50 billion dollars to Egypt since 1975, or an average of $1.38 billion per year – much of which has gone to military assistance. Since Mubarak’s fall, a modest $150 million has been redirected to help with economic recovery and the transition to a more democratic state.

“We’re providing grants to Egyptian and American entities for democracy and civil society, and for job training and job creation – those type of activities,” says a US official in Cairo, who declined to give further details about which programs have already been implemented.

‘Boot camp’ aims to help Egyptians build large firms

The goal of this week’s entrepreneurial Boot Camp is to help Egyptians expand their ideas and form companies that create substantive amounts of jobs – a process experts say is little known among Egypt’s small-business community.

The Boot Camp is sponsored by State Department’s Global Entrepreneurship Program and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in cooperation withDenmark. It was planned well before the Arab Spring in line with objectives outlined inPresident Obama’s “A New Beginning” speech in Cairo in 2009. But the event is capitalizing on the spirit of the recent uprising as people see an increased opportunity to forge their own bold paths.

“I think if we get them some infrastructure – mentoring, financing, and education [about how to formally create businesses] – some of the next big ideas will be coming out of Egypt,” says Jeff Hoffman, an American entrepreneur who is mentoring participants this week.

The Boot Camp will end in a final competition between its 46 participants. They range from Sarah Hamdi, who currently works as an assistant for a business development executive but wants to create an app that connects people to their nearest hospital, to college student Hady Ahmed Fathy, who has dreams of launching a Web service to improve communication between Web designers and their clients.

Winners will receive training in the US or Denmark, and participate in Egypt’s Technology Innovation and Entrepreneurship Centre Incubation Program. The center is a collaborating partner in the event and is affiliated with the Egyptian government.

‘We want development in other areas’

The Boot Camp is just one example of USAID funding at work.

Another beneficiary of USAID is farmer Mohammad Abdel Wahab, whose crop yield has doubled since he began receiving training and his profits increased by one quarter.

He has been working with Washington-based nonprofit organization ACDI/VOCI, which has received $7 million in USAID funding to train, advise, and technically assist Egyptian farmers over a five-year period starting in 2008.

But while he has benefited from USAID, he says it isn’t enough. From inconsistent water supplies, to poor education, to lack of knowledge about how to manage their livestock, problems in his hometown abound. He has been advising others in his area, and estimates that the ripple-effect of his instruction has helped nearly 300 farmers in his village. But agriculture development is only one small aspect of a slew of problems that need attention.

“We want development in other areas, and have real projects be implemented, not just talks,” says Ibrahim Ahmed Aslan, who grows squash and tomatoes. “We are improving, but it’s a slow process.”

Egyptian empowerment

The US has also voiced support for democratic change.

But such support is controversial, given the US backing of Mubarak’s autocratic rule for nearly 30 years. The revolution gave Egyptians a sense of empowerment and self-determination that has increased resistance to outside help.

Senators McCain and Kerry recommended to the head of Egypt’s military council, Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, that international observers monitor the upcoming voting process, and that third-party institutions assist with party organization and voter identification.

President and CEO Bill Sweeney of theInternational Foundation for Electoral System(IFES), a nonprofit that receives USAID funding to help emerging democracies meet world voting standards, says international organizations are currently waiting for official invitations from the Egyptian government to assist in upcoming parliamentary and presidential elections, set to begin this fall.

He says IFES is currently running education sessions for judges and judicial staff who will be involved in Egypt’s elections and that they are currently in talks with the foreign, interior, and justice ministries regarding assistance.

Many Egyptians say substantive economic and democratic reforms have yet to be made in the post-Mubarak era.

Mr. Kamal, however, is looking toward his fellow Egyptians to bring about real change. He is confident that some of his own ideas will ultimately help improve the economy, and speaks for many when he says, “I think Egyptians believe they are the ones who should do something for the country, not the president of the United States.”

Protest to go ahead despite ban by Algerian authorities

by Admin on February 10, 2011 in Creeping Communism, Egypt, Islamo-Fascism, Muslim Brotherhood, Terrorism with No comments

RUADHÁN Mac CORMAIC
IrishTimes.com

ALGERIA: ALGERIA’S OPPOSITION has said it will go ahead with a planned protest on Saturday despite a ban by authorities.

Hoping to build on the momentum generated by the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, the march’s organisers – including trade unions, youth groups and opposition politicians – said they would demand the immediate end of president Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s regime.

The Rally for Culture and Democracy (RCD), an umbrella group of the regime’s critics, said it would defy a ban by the authorities in Algiers and go ahead with the march. Protests in the Algerian capital have been banned since June 2001 after protests by Berber activists in the Kabylie region left eight dead and hundreds injured.

The government promised last week that Algeria’s 19-year-old state of emergency would be lifted “in the very near future” and called on state-owned broadcasters to provide fair coverage of authorised political parties – two key demands of the opposition. But the RCD dismissed the president’s pledge to lift martial law as a political manoeuvre.

Unsettled by events elsewhere in north Africa, the Algerian government has lowered the price of cooking oil and sugar and said it would subsidise other staples such as wheat and milk.

The lifting of the state of emergency has been a rallying point for protesters who staged demonstrations across the country last month. The measure was imposed after the cancellation of Algeria’s first multi-party elections that Islamists were set to win in 1992.

Riots over the rising cost of living resulted in five deaths and left more than 800 injured in early January, while three Algerians have died after setting themselves on fire in recent weeks – mimicking the act of the 26-year-old Mohamed Bouazizi, whose self-immolation is seen as the spark that set off the Tunisian revolution.

Thanks to Algeria’s considerable oil wealth and record foreign exchange reserves of up to $150 billion, Mr Bouteflika, the country’s president since 1999, has ample funds at his disposal to subsidise food staples.

However, the government’s failure to relieve problems in housing and unemployment for the population of 35 million have undermined the regime’s credibility.

A diplomatic cable sent from the US embassy in Algiers in December 2007, published by WikiLeaks, described a regime that was “fragile in ways it was not before, plagued by a lack of vision, unprecedented levels of corruption and rumblings of division within the military rank and file.”

In February 2008, another US dispatch pointed to “long-standing political alienation and social discontent”. Housing was “woefully short” while unemployment was “endemic”.

FOX NEWS’ GREG PALKOT HOSPITALIZED AFTER CAIRO BEATING

by Admin on February 3, 2011 in Egypt, Islamo-Fascism with No comments

http://videos.mediaite.com/embed/player/?layout=&playlist_cid=&media_type=video&content=HKGX3310G17JK99L&read_more=1&widget_type_cid=svp

Egypt: Muslim Brotherhood Says it Will Scrap Peace Treaty With Israel if it Comes to Power…

by Admin on February 3, 2011 in Egypt, Islamo-Fascism, Muslim Brotherhood with No comments

Egypt’s banned Muslim Brotherhood movement has unveiled its plans to scrap a peace treaty with Israel if it comes to power, a deputy leader said in an interview with NHK TV.
Rashad al-Bayoumi said the peace treaty with Israel will be abolished after a provisional government is formed by the movement and other Egypt’s opposition parties.
“After President Mubarak steps down and a provisional government is formed, there is a need to dissolve the peace treaty with Israel,” al-Bayoumi said.
Egypt was the first Arab country to officially recognize Israel and sign a peace agreement with the Israeli government in 1979. It is also a major mediator of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The Muslim Brotherhood has recently come to light amid mass anti-government protests in Egypt. Some media voiced concerns that the banned Islamic movement could eventually take power in the riot-hit Arab country.
The deeply conservative Islamic movement, which wants to move Egypt from secularism and return to the rules of the Quran, failed to win a single seat in the 2010 Egyptian parliamentary election.
The Muslim Brotherhood joined the anti-government protests in Egypt last week. The unrest, seen by many analysts as a major threat to repressive governments in the region, has already claimed the lives of at least 300 people and injured several thousand.
TOKYO, February 3 (RIA Novosti)

Muslims Attack Christians in Egypt, 11 Murdered

by Admin on February 3, 2011 in Egypt, Islamo-Fascism, Muslim Brotherhood with No comments

(AINA) — News of a massacre of two Christian Coptic families by Islamists just emerged from Upper Egypt with the return of the Internet connections after a week of Internet blackout by the Egyptian regime. The massacre took place on Sunday, January 30 at 3 PM in the village of Sharona near Maghagha, Minya province. Two Islamists groups, aided by the Muslim neighbors, descended on the roof of houses owned by Copts, killing eleven Copts, including children, and seriously injuring four others.

Anba Agathon, Bishop of Maghagha, told Coptic activist Dr. Mona Roman in a televised interview on Al-Karma TV that the killers are their neighbors, who seized the opportunity of the mayhem prevailing in Egypt and the absence of police protection to slaughter the Copts. He said that he visited today the four injured Copts, who escaped death despite being shot, at Maghagha General Hospital and they told him that they recognized the main attackers as they come from the same village of Sharona. They gave the Bishop details of what happened.

“The two families were staying in their homes with their doors locked when suddenly the Islamists descended on them,” said Bishop Agathon, “killing eleven and leaving for dead four others family members. In addition, they looted everything that was in the two Coptic houses, including money, furniture and electrical equipment. They also looted livestock and grain.”…