Egyptian summers have always been hot. But it has not always been this hot, with temperatures barely dipping below 100 degrees in Cairo since May, testing tempers and massacring houseplants. And it has never been this hot at a time when the government has imposed power cuts on most of the country for more than a year, plunging millions into sweaty, un-air-conditioned misery for hours each day.
Since last summer, when energy shortages forced the government to impose the daily power cuts, the blackouts have become such a fact of life that local media has taken to publishing regular tips for what to do if stranded in an elevator as the power goes off. At least nine people have died under such circumstances, according to local media reports.
“Pound on the door and don’t panic,” suggested a recent headline in Al Masry Al Youm, one news outlet. But it had little advice for fish sellers who struggle to refrigerate their wares, farmers whose chickens are dying en masse, people with little cash to fix shorted-out appliances or students studying for the all-important college entrance exams by flashlight.
After importing several emergency cargoes of natural gas, the government said the blackouts would stop from this past Sunday until mid-September, when it said they might be reinstated.
Yet social media users were still reporting power cuts on Sunday, and a government-affiliated news site, Cairo24, quoted a spokesman for the Electricity Ministry, Ayman Hamza, acknowledging that breakdowns and repairs had caused some unplanned outages.
In a year when soaring prices, subsidy cuts and the currency’s steep decline have already left people gasping, Egyptians have little patience for official statements blaming relentless heat waves for the crisis — even if it is true that Egypt is heating up at one of the world’s fastest rates.
“We’ve reached the point where no matter how much we lose, we know full well the government won’t do anything for us,” said Ahmed al-Hawari, 50, an electrical appliance technician in a Cairo suburb who said he often arrived at his repair shop only to turn around and leave when he found the power out. “We have to fend for ourselves.”
He said he was losing business, even though more customers were bringing in fans and kettles damaged by the electrical outages.
Ahmed Rabea, 28, a freelance graphic designer in a village south of Alexandria, resorted to working from his rooftop after losing customers who grew exasperated with his blackout-induced delays. There, he could at least catch a wireless internet signal from the cell towers in an industrial zone nearby.
The problem is, the roof is hot. Very hot.
“Let’s hope they’ll actually end them as announced,” he said of the power outages.
Few Egyptians can afford such disruptions these days. Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine destabilized Egypt’s already fragile economy, the price of everything from groceries to school fees has made eye-popping leaps. Overall inflation has slowed in recent months, yet food prices have continued to increase.
Although international lenders poured $57 billion into Egypt’s coffers this year to steady a country seen as key to regional stability, government finances remain shaky, reflecting a malaise that analysts warn will continue unless Cairo gets serious about economic reforms.
Attacks by Yemen’s Houthi militia on shipping in the Red Sea have drained crucial revenue from Egypt’s Suez Canal. And with domestic gas output declining, the government, which in 2022 was flush enough with natural gas that it aimed to supply a needy Europe with its excess, plans to spend some $1.18 billion on energy imports to stop the blackouts by year’s end.
It also plans to increase renewable energy production, though experts say Egypt has neither the infrastructure nor the regulatory framework to do so quickly.
And it is not clear that Egyptian leaders can quell public discontent spilling over in ways that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago, when President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi enjoyed widespread, though far from universal, support, and his authoritarian grip reduced criticism to a whisper.
A digital advertising screen on a busy street in Giza recently caused a stir when it started flashing images portraying Mr. el-Sisi as a murderer and a thief, a rare spectacle of defiance that quickly went viral.
Rolling blackouts that undermined faith in his predecessor helped bring Mr. el-Sisi to power in a 2013 military takeover that promised competence and stability. But these days, the blackouts strike Egyptians not just as a reflection of government ineptitude, but also as unfair favoritism: Wealthy beach resorts were spared the cuts, while parts of Upper Egypt reported outages lasting more than 10 hours.
“Seriously, I avoid speaking or dealing with my family or my son during the power cut hours because I lose my temper so quickly,” said Fatma Hassan, 28, who lives in Aswan, Egypt’s southernmost city, where the temperature hit 121 degrees on June 6. In the shade.
While some areas saw no disruptions, she noted, her in-laws lost power for three hours a day. When she visits, the family puts her 10-month-old son in a bucket of water to cool him.
Still, there is little to suggest that the government is losing control. The authorities quickly arrested a technician over the onscreen portrayal of Mr. el-Sisi as a killer, saying the suspect was acting on the orders of an Islamist opposition group that Egypt has branded a terrorist organization. They also arrested more than 100 people accused of calling for a day of protest this month, rights groups say.
But the complaints go on.
“Sunday is too late already” to end the cuts, said Yehiya Ezzat, 38, a poultry wholesaler in Assiut, four hours south of Cairo. He said farmers were losing tens of thousands of baby chicks after less than an hour without ventilation and air-conditioning. “I don’t think they understand the consequences of what they’re doing,” he added.
Not knowing what else to do, Mr. Ezzat recently put some of the chickens that had died during a blackout in a dumpster, he said. He was promptly fined more than $500.
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