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Youth in the Middle East: Nowhere to Go but the Street
January 31, 2011
The firestorm of events across the Middle East over the past few days can’t be explained by long-term development factors: the link between politics and economic development (or lack thereof) is complex in the extreme. Still, the staggering lack of opportunities for young people, especially young entrepreneurs without political connections, is clearly an important part of the mix. That includes people like Mohamed Bouazizi, the 26 year old whose self-immolation sparked the protests which brought down Tunisia’s president, and which in turn set off the remarkable events unfolding in Egypt.
The Middle East has witnessed an incredible expansion of both youth populations and education over the past twenty years. Fully two thirds of the region’s population is below 24 years old. Tertiary enrollment in the Egypt has climbed from 14 to 28 percent since 1990, and in Tunisia from 8 to 34 percent. Cairo University alone has around 200,000 students.
But while educational opportunities abound, jobs do not. Unemployment among 15-24 year olds in the Middle East and North Africa is the highest of any region in the world, averaging more than 25 percent. In Egypt in 2005 that number was 34%, in Tunisia it was 31%. One big reason is anemic private sector growth. And behind weak private sector performance is exactly the kind of favoritism that drove Mr. Bouazizi to desperation.
Before coming to CGD, I worked in the Middle East and North Africa department of the World Bank for a year—not nearly long enough to become any kind of expert, but long enough to meet some. A report by some of my more seasoned colleagues looked at the region’s private sector in some depth. It noted that while Egypt might have been one of the top ten performers on the bank’s own Doing Business reform measures in recent years and other countries in the region were also rising up the rankings, there was a big gap between de jure reforms and de facto implementation:
“Firms in MENA are much older than in other parts of the world… Business managers are also older than elsewhere. Incumbent firms face less competition. Except in South Asia, fewer registered firms per capita are found in MENA… These are all symptoms of a discriminatory business environment that prevents the entry and exit of firms… the networks of privileges and the nexus between politics and business hurt the credibility of governments and reformers in particular. The perception that connections are an important source of competitiveness (some say the most important) discourages many would-be entrepreneurs…The large proportion of entrepreneurs… believe that rules and regulations will not be consistently and predictably applied explains why policy reforms may not have a strong response from investors.”
With good private sector jobs mostly limited to the few companies with political connections and government jobs largely the preserve of an older generation, there weren’t many places for young graduates to go but onto the streets. Given that, few in the Middle East or North Africa will have been surprised that frustrations have boiled over –even if the scale and early success of the protests has shaken regional leaders from the Atlantic to the Arabian Sea.
Nic van De Walle suggests term limits for heads of state would do the region a power of good. Perhaps the same should apply to the employees and managers of privileged private firms and state-owned enterprises. His CGD book, Overcoming Stagnation in Aid Dependent Countries, Nic argues that withholding aid can be a powerful lever for change—when countries are aid dependent. But it’s hard for me to see the crisis in the region as mostly a story about aid.
Net Official Development Assistance (ODA) amounted to just 4% of central government expenditure in Tunisia in 2008 according to the World Development Indicators. It’s true that in Egypt in 1990, net ODA accounted for 36 percent of government expenditures. But by 2008, that figure was 3 percent. That year, ODA and other aid to Egypt was worth only 11 percent of tourist receipts or fourteen percent of manufactures exports. And while Mubarak received a range of other types of diplomatic and military support from the United States, there are a number of long-lasting dynasties in the region that aren’t on the friends list of any major donor.
In Pakistan, like Egypt a big U.S. aid recipient that doesn’t always do what Washington would like, Nancy Birdsall emphasizes that billions of dollars in American aid can’t even guarantee the passage of fairly basic economic reforms—let alone fundamentally change the calculus of a political leader struggling to hold onto power.
All of which suggests that what happens next is in the hands of the leaders and people of the region, not the diplomats and foreign officials who are watching from afar.
Thanks to Wren Elhai for adding to this blog post.
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5 Responses to “Youth in the Middle East: Nowhere to Go but the Street”
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February 1st, 2011 at 12:29 pm
The headline “Youth in the Middle East: Nowhere to Go but the Street” prompted me to click through thinking this article might point to some guidance for donors, philanthropists, business, and civil society. Aside from term limits, not many here, but a clear summary of points those working in the region are acutely aware of. I have read countless reports of regional initiatives focused on youth programs and entrepreneurship. The more interesting that offer strong prospects for sustainability and replication, seem to be region-wide “home grown” efforts to break through the traditional class structures that hamper youth and entrepreneurship. I recall at the Entrepreneurship Week over the summer, DC was inundated by youth leaders in government, civil society, and the private sector from across MENA. They were a dynamic and innovative group, but in my interactions with them, somewhat wary as to the extent to which “we” could help them. Good intentions aside, the impression I got is that they (rightly or wrongly) perceive that “we” too often either appear to, or simply have, ulterior motives. Now that youth are empowering themselves in the region, I would say we all, but especially donors, need to re-evaluate how we can move beyond our agendas (and donors’ foreign policy objectives), and collectively and effectively respond to what those at the bottom are collectively and effectively clamoring for. It is as described in this post: access to a level playing field and the modern methods of self determination and dignity which we enjoy. It may be that with all the education and capacity building that foreign donors and others have provided, combined with access to information and communications thanks to the internet, that this MENA generation has learned to fish. And that they now want to hold the rod and reel, and feel the excitement of landing the big one (Democracy?) with our encouragement, but not with our hands on the kit.
February 1st, 2011 at 11:57 pm
Charles Kenny understates the significance of US support to Egypt, given the considerable amount of military aid that Egypt receives in addition to ODA. Nonetheless, his critique of my argument is well-taken, in what I thought was an excellent entry into the CGD Blog. My original recommendation of pressuring countries to undertake term limits was after all designed for low-income aid dependent countries, in which aid was likely to make up a much larger share of GNP. Nonetheless, I do think that donor governments can rely on a kind of soft power on this issue that goes beyond simply the extent to which governments rely economically on donor support. In the same way that it has become largely unacceptable to have military regimes or not to convene some kind of election on a regular basis, public suasion could be encouraged regarding term limits.
February 2nd, 2011 at 9:03 am
The “lack of opportunities” Mr. Kenny speaks of would, if they were the reason for recent events, have led to uprisings every year for the last 6,000 in Egypt.
Quite the opposite, it has been Egypt’s incomplete but substantial transformation over the last thirty years that expanded the gap between its relative socioeconomic sophistication and its political backwardness to such a degree that the rupture now has become violent.
It’s a commonplace to speak of “revolutions of rising expectations.” Poor, hopeless people are beaten down and stay that way. People who are conscious of the gulf between their possibilities and the way they are treated feel outrage and eventually take action.
The complaints I read in the press, besides the “I wish I had more money” variety, are all about how abusive or at least disrespectful the bureaucracy and police are. Egyptians want to be treated decently.
Have a look at the famous Egyptian comedy film “Al-irhab wal kabab,” where Adel Imam is trapped with hundreds of other people in a sort of cattle drive inside the Mugamma building. On the darker side, have a look at the movie of Naguib Mahfouz’s novella “Karnak Cafe” (Al-Karnak), with the scenes of horrific police abuse: they would be bad enough objectively but when an extended sequence victimizes Soad Hosny, the “Cinderella of Egyptian cinema” or effectively the equivalent of our Debbie Reynolds, the impact in Egypt’s cultural terms is probably much higher than we can even appreciate.
In any case, it would be dumb to get into a “Who lost Egypt?” game. Egypt isn’t lost; it’s arguably moving in the right direction.
February 3rd, 2011 at 12:46 pm
Even if withholding aid provides no leverage for change in Egypt there is a more troubling issue. Continuing aid for decades to a regime with declining legitimacy risks ex post being absolutely counterproductive from a diplomatic and security point of view — and increasingly ineffective from a development point of view too if it simply fuels insider privileges and corruption. But the United States has had no aid leverage ever in Egypt as the development and military aid were clearly tied to the Egypt-Israeli peace agreement deal. Facing the reality that aid seldom brings leverage clarifies the question on the table: Did the development good it may have done (better health, more education, support for civil society groups) offset sufficiently the diplomatic/security harm it may have started to do at some point in the past by linking the U.S. to an increasingly illegitimate regime?
February 11th, 2011 at 5:36 pm
[...] recent and dramatic food price rises alongside a growing and increasingly educated youth population denied opportunities by a sclerotic private sector based on patronage and favoritism. But food price increases have been [...]