Banners along streets this month were Egypt’s latest effort to curb a pressing problem: a population growing faster than the economy can support.
It looks like a mirage but the lush fields of cauliflower, apricot trees and melon growing among a vast stretch of sand north of Cairo’s pyramids is all too real — proof of Egypt’s determination to turn its deserts green. While climate change and land overuse help many deserts across the world advance, Egypt is slowly greening the sand that covers almost all of its territory.
Alexandria, the Egyptian coastal city where Cleopatra had love affairs with Julius Caesar and Mark Anthony, is trying to regain some of its old glory as a tourism destination for European and Arab elites. This summer, a new luxury hotel opened on the site of a grand old establishment where Austrian archdukes and Egyptian khedives would gather for Viennese pastries or tennis a century ago.