Cultural Demography With a population exceeding 80 million, Egypt is the most populous country in the Arab world and one of the most populous countries in Africa (Nigeria and Ethiopia being some of the others). Most of the Egyptian populace lives in Cairo and Alexandria, on the banks of the Nile, in the Nile delta, which fans out north of Cairo, or along the Suez Canal. These regions are among the world's most densely populated, containing an average of over 1,540 person per square kilometer (3,820 per square mile).
Small communities spread throughout the desert regions of Egypt are clustered around oases, historic trade and transportation routes. The government has tried with mixed success to encourage migration to newly irrigated land reclaimed from the desert. The proportion of the population living in rural areas has continued to decrease as people move to the cities in search of employment and a higher standard of living.
Cultural Heritage
Egypt's vast and rich literature constitutes an important cultural element in the life of the country and in the Arab world as a whole. Egyptian novelists and poets were among the first to experiment with new styles of Arabic literature, and the forms they developed have been widely imitated. Egyptian novelist Naguib Mahfouz is the only Arab to win the Nobel Prize for literature. Egyptian books and films are available throughout the Middle East.
Egypt has endured as a unified state for more than 5,000 years, and archeological evidence indicates that a developed Egyptian society has existed for much longer. Egyptians take pride in their Pharaonic heritage and in their descent from what they consider mankind's earliest civilization. The Arabic word for Egypt is Misr, which originally connoted "civilization" or "metropolis."
Ethnicity, Language and Religion The Egyptians are a fairly homogeneous people of Hamitic origin-people originally from the northern and north-eastern Africa and the Canary Islands, including the Berbers of North Africa; the Fulas, Tuaregs and Tibbus of the Sudan; the ancient Egyptians; as well as the major Ethiopian peoples. Mediterranean and Arab influences appear in the north, and there is some mixing in the south with the Nubians of northern Sudan.
Ethnic minorities include a small number of Bedouin Arab nomads in the eastern and western deserts and in the Sinai, Berbers to the west, some 50,000-100,000 Nubians clustered along the upper Nile, as well as Greeks, Armenians and Europeans such as French and Italians.
In terms of religion, most Egyptians practice Sunni Islam, while Coptic Christianity is the major non-Islamic religion practiced.
Although Arabic is the official language, English and French are also widely understood by educated classes.
Human Development In terms of population trends, the population growth rate is 1.721 percent. The birth rate is 22.53 births per 1,000 and the death rate is 5.11 deaths per 1,000. The fertility rate is 2.77 children born per woman.
In terms of health and welfare, the infant mortality rate is 28.36 deaths per 1,000 live births. Life expectancy at birth for the total population is 71.85 years of age, according to recent estimates (69.3 years for males and 74.52 years for females). The population growth is estimated at 1.78 percent per year.
The literacy rate is about 71 percent of the adult population, although the rates per gender are not balanced. The literacy rate for males is 83 percent, while it is 59 percent for females.
Education is compulsory from ages six through twelve and free through university. About 87 percent of children enter primary school, but half drop out after their sixth year. There are 20,000 primary and secondary schools with some 10 million students; 12 major universities with about 500,000 students; and 67 teacher colleges. Major universities include Cairo University (100,000 students), Alexandria University, the American University in Cairo, and the 1,000-year-old Al-Azhar University, one of the world's major centers of Islamic learning.
About 6.4 percent of GDP in this country is spent on health expenditures; about 3.8 percent of GDP in this country is spent on education. Access to water and sanitation in this country is regarded to be good, although the quality may be less than optimal in certain rural areas.
A notable measure of human development is the Human Development Index (HDI), which is formulated by the United Nations Development Program. The HDI is a composite of several indicators, which measure a country's achievements in three main areas of human development: longevity, knowledge and education, as well as economic standard of living. In a ranking of 169 countries, the HDI places Egypt in the medium human development category, at 101st place.
Note: Although the concept of human development is complicated and cannot be properly captured by values and indices, the HDI, which is calculated and updated annually, offers a wide-ranging assessment of human development in certain countries, not based solely upon traditional economic and financial indicators.
Written by Dr. Denise Youngblood Coleman, Editor in Chief,
www.countrywatch.com . See Bibliography for list of general research sources.