Under Sisi, the role of the military companies has expanded rapidly. Rather than being simply awarded contracts, they are taking over the management of entire projects. Theoretically, this is intended to encourage foreign investment, promising a simpler, more streamlined process for investors. But this is little more than rhetoric, according to Shana Marshall, associate director and research instructor at George Washington University’s Institute for Middle East Studies.
“There’s this cliché that to attract foreign investment, you have to cut bureaucratic red tape and centralize it in one place,” Marshall said. “The World Bank likes to use that language. So Egypt is playing lip service to the idea of fighting bureaucratic bloat. In this case, it just centralizes corruption.”
These aren’t insignificant projects, either. The $9 billion New Suez Canal expansion, for example, was entirely overseen by the EAF. With a navy admiral at the helm of the Suez Canal Authority, the military was able to ensure that dredging contracts were awarded first to its own engineering firms and next, to firms belonging to its political allies. “This effort enables the military to keep tight control over the project[s], to give contracts to Gulf companies and to function like a jobs program for enlisted men,” Marshall said.
Sisi’s next megaproject will attempt to create 1.5 million acres of farmable land in the desert. Experts have raised doubts whether enough laborers will be willing to leave their ancestral homes along the Nile to work the empty desert, not to mention whether the land will have sufficient groundwater to keep the new fields irrigated. But Sisi isn’t looking that far ahead. His eyes are on the short term — namely on the host of military and Gulf contracts to be awarded on the scheme, and on the foreign investment to be earned.
That’s why he favors such megaprojects: because they can keep his most important constituency, the military, rich and happy. Package them in a thick layer of patriotism, and he can even boost his approval rating along the way.