Africa, North

Egypt

With a population of more than 75 million, and a literacy rate of about 50 percent, Egypt holds a dominant position in the Arab world. Thanks to its location at the intersection of the Middle East and North Africa, and to its long history of civilization, Egypt has been the cultural and information center of Arab publishing and media, and its press and broadcast facilities are the most developed in the region.

Most Egyptians (nearly all of them Sunni Muslims) live along the Nile River as 95 percent of the country is desert. Opening of the Suez Canal in 1867 began a period of European influence, and [Page 34]until independence in 1923, British dominance. Britain maintained troops in the country until after World War II. The Egyptian army revolted in 1952, forcing out King Farouk and by 1954 Gamal Abdel Nasser was in full charge of what became a fairly stable one-party state, with only two successive leaders after Nasser's death in 1970.

The Egyptian press consists of nearly 500 newspapers and magazines. Three major dailies published in Cairo are controlled by the government, and Al-Ahram (with a circulation of nearly a million copies by the early 2000s) serves as the semiofficial voice of the regime. Among the first papers in the country, it began as a weekly in 1875. The number of papers slowly expanded, most of them becoming increasingly partisan after World War I. After the 1952 army takeover, however, many newspapers disappeared and all others were closely censored for years. By the early twenty-first century, however, many weekly party papers were publishing in addition to the government-supported press. Virtually all are printed at government-owned printing facilities. Despite amendments in 2006, the country's press law still provides for punishment for publication of “false” news, attacks on Egypt's or foreign leaders, or libel.

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