Many people are disgruntled with the president’s handling of the economy after a decade in power.
BBC
Once hailed by many people as a saviour, Egypt’s strongman leader Abdul Fattah al-Sisi is now seen in a very different light.
Egyptians who took to the streets to cheer for the general-turned-president a decade ago are not as happy as they hoped they would be.
As Mr Sisi runs for his third consecutive term as president next week, a crumbling economy is top of most people’s list of complaints.
Nadia is one of those struggling to make ends meet as Mr Sisi’s government continues to implement what it calls “economic reforms”.
The 57-year-old widow and mother of six can barely make a living selling newspapers at a street-side kiosk.
In her small flat in one of Cairo’s crowded slums, Nadia tells me that she last bought meat three years ago. To her, life is becoming more unaffordable by the day.
“I am too scared to go to sleep sometimes, because I know the next morning prices will have gone up,” she says with a faint smile and eyes full of pain.
The latest official figures show that Egypt’s inflation rate in October was 38.5%, a slight fall from the record 40.3% reported the previous month.
These numbers are unheard of in the Arab world’s most populous country, and the real inflation rate experienced by ordinary people is often much worse than the government’s figure.
‘We are forgotten’
But as prices have risen, Nadia’s income has dropped.
More than a decade ago, she used to sell nearly 200 newspapers a day, but today it is barely 20.
Nadia says today cooking a meal costs between 300 and 500 Egyptian pounds (£7.70-£13; $9.70-16.20), but a few years ago it was about a sixth of the price.
“Even fruit is too expensive,” she tells me.
In the past nine months, the Egyptian pound has lost more than 50% of its value against the US dollar.
With the Egyptian economy heavily dependent on imports, the prices of basic commodities have skyrocketed beyond the reach of many households and a black market for foreign currency has flourished.
Nadia does not have much hope and is obviously apprehensive.
“No-one thinks of the poor. It’s as if we are invisible,” she says, adding with a sigh: “We are forgotten.”
Promises of prosperity
Since Mr Sisi became president in 2014 – a year after he led the military’s overthrow of his Islamist predecessor, Mohammed Morsi – huge sums of money have been spent on huge infrastructure projects.
