Youth Unemployment and Poverty in Egypt

Egypt's 2011 Tahrir Revolution was fueled by the volatile combination of pervasive public governance failures and a large youth population blocked from successfully navigating the transition to adulthood. Far from addressing these problems, this Revolution led to instability, economic stagnation, and the rapid return to power of Egypt's military-elite alliance, further marginalizing the youth population. This article argues that Egyptian youth's predicament must be understood as the result of public governance failures. Their dependence on a failed and unaccountable public education system leaves them without the skills needed for productive employment, while Egypt's dualistic limited access order leads to the suppression of medium-size firms, forcing low-income youth to accept poorly paid, insecure employment in the informal sector, and constraining opportunities for educated youth, particularly young women, who remain outside the workforce. Viable, sustained solutions to youth's problems require that the Egyptian government tackle the underlying public governance failures by introducing accountability to citizens for public service quality, streamlining regulatory systems to accelerate enterprise growth and expand competition, and instituting greater transparency to achieve inclusive and broad-based growth. Though not directed at youth per se, such systemic reforms must underpin any successful effort to relieve Egypt's youth crisis.