Wood Trees and Industries: A Surprising Opportunity for Egypt
by Tarek Erfan Shafey
Wood Trees for Egypt
Egypt’s wood industry has faced hurdles in the past decade, but still has high potential, backed by a surprisingly wide and versatile range of wood trees and wood substitute products cultivable in Egypt or imported from Africa. Wood uses in Egypt include for home and office furniture, doors, floorings, boats, ships, industry and construction, and the wood industry is the largest in Africa and the Arab countries. In 2019, products for the domestic market were worth USD 1 Billion and exports USD 440…
Electric Vehicles: A Window of Opportunity for Egypt
by Tarek Erfan Shafey
Egypt’s Potential
As a populous, lower-middle income and leading Arab and African country, Egypt faces challenges on which it can nevertheless act and turn into opportunities. As a densely populated country with serious traffic congestion, air and noise pollution problems caused by fuel-based vehicles, the production and exporting of electric vehicles is both an excellent domestic solution and a great opportunity to lead this nascent market in the Arab region and Africa. Electric vehicles (cars, buses and other public transport vehicles, trucks and trains) are the transport modes…
How Egypt Can Achieve Water Security
by Tarek Erfan Shafey
Complacent about its Aswan High Dam reservoir levels and Nilewater share, Egypt wasted and mismanaged its water resources in recent decades; leading Egypt’s population; now 101 million and rising fast, to a growing water deficit. Water security is now further challenged by Ethiopia’s upcoming, huge dam on the Blue Nile, and rising heat and aridity with global warming. However, an integrated strategy to manage both water demand and supply, and utilize increasingly efficient and affordable new water technologies, can deliver the crucial water security for Egypt. …
Egypt’s Standout Potential in Bio-energy
Egypt has in recent years achieved electricity and now gas surpluses and reduced its oil imports, but energy supply still needs to keep up with fast-growing demand. Solutions include biogas generated from the abundant domestic organic waste, and biofuels extracted from trees well-adapted to Egypt’s climate + cultivating algae in greenhouses. Together they can become essential, renewable, environment-friendly and very economically valuable fuels. We explore Egypt’s potential in biogas and biofuels, together known as “bio-energy”, and in compost. The latter is a by-product and a high-quality and environment-friendly organic fertilizer which boosts agricultural productivity. …
In this article we focus on how Egypt can mitigate climate change via optimizing architecture, building materials and urban planning to suit its evolving climate and related challenges. As a densely populated developing country with a formerly moderate and equable climate, but now facing increasing heat, aridity, severe weather phenomena, and serious and diverse climate change threats including harm to its important agricultural sector, Egypt shares a lot with many countries, and solutions adopted successfully there are widely applicable elsewhere.
Egypt’s climate has been equable for millennia, with little extreme or severe weather, as proven by the durability of its…
